Internet, E-Marketing and E-Commerce Guides

9 years old girl, CEO of the web designing company

2009-06-30T18:52:00.001+07:00

Sreelakshmi Suresh, a nine-year-old girl from Kozhikode district in Kerala and CEO of the web designing company eDesign, is being credited as the youngest web designer in the state for developing the website of the Bar Council of Kerala, BarCouncilKerala.com.

Sreelakshmi, the daughter of an advocate, is believed to have already designed and developed more than 10 websites, including the official website of her own school, a website for deaf people and a Malayalam news website for kids.

When aged just eight, Shreelaxmi designed the official website of her own school apart from another website for deaf people and a Malyalam news website for kids.

Sreelakshmi is the only member of the Association of American Webmasters, under the age of 18.

Association of American Webmasters has honoured Sreelakshmi Suresh by giving her their membership along with their highest award for excellence in web designing, the Gold Web Award. [Source: Sify/ANI]

Source: http://tungblog.atikomtrirat.com/2009/06/9-years-old-girl-develops-bar-council.html

Best Free Weblog Software Other Than WordPress

2009-06-30T18:26:00.000+07:00

Weblog software is designed to simplify the creation and maintenance of weblogs. As specialized content management systems, weblog applications support the authoring, editing, and publishing of blog posts and comments, with special functions for image management, web syndication, and moderation of posts and comments.

We all know WordPress is one the most popular weblog applications. What other options can we choose? We have collected the following Top Quality Weblog Software Other Than WordPress for you.

Melody is an open source content management, blogging and publishing platform, derived from the popular blogging tool Movable Type. At its onset, Melody is distinct from Movable Type by having put in place a set of processes that assist the greater Movable Type and Melody communities to contribute features, changes and fixes more freely and quickly back to the core product. This allows independent developers to pursue the features and preferences that matter to them most.

The promise of Melody is to serve its community by working to build a product according to the principles and philosophies that have helped make WordPress, Apache, Linux, Firefox and other open source applications so successful. Those principles include creating and fostering open communication channels with its user base, by building transparency into its roadmap, and by permitting users to more freely contribute back to the core product.

Pricing: Free
Source: http://openmelody.org/

When it comes to publishing on the internet, beginners and experts alike are met with a bothersome paradox: word processors and graphics applications allow anyone to do a pretty good job of managing text and images on a personal computer, but to make these available to the worldwide web â€“ a seemingly similar environment of documents and destinations â€“ ease of use vanishes behind sudden requirements for multilingual programming skills, proficiency in computer-based graphic design, and, ultimately, the patience of a saint.

Textpattern is a flexible, elegant and easy-to-use content management system and it is both free and open source. Textpattern is a web application designed to help overcome these and other hurdles to publishing online, and to simplify the production of well-structured, standards-compliant web pages.

Pricing: Free
Source: http://www.textpattern.com/

Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. Drupal is open-source software distributed under the GPL (â€�General Public Licenseâ€�) and is maintained and developed by a community of thousands of users and developers.

Pricing: Free
Source: http://drupal.org/

Radiant is a no-fluff, open source content management system designed for small teams with the following main features. Built from the ground up to be as simple as possible, Radiant features an elegant administrative interface that centers around three key components: pages, snippets, and layouts.

Radiant is licensed under the MIT License. This means that Radiant is free for commercial and non-profit use. It also means that you are free to modify and distribute Radiant as long as you donâ€™t remove the appropriate notices from the source code.

Pricing: Free
Source: http://radiantcms.org/

Frog CMS is a PHP version of Radiant CMS, a well known Ruby on Rails application. Frog CMS share the goal to simplify content management, and offer an elegant user interface, flexible templating per page, simple user management and permissions and all what you need for your files management.

Frog requires a MySQL database with InnoDB support, a web server (Apache with mod_rewrite is highly recommended) and is distributed under the MIT software license.

Pricing: Free
Source: http://www.madebyfrog.com/

XOOPS is an acronym of eXtensible Object Oriented Portal System. Though started as a portal system, XOOPS is in fact striving steadily on the track of Content Management System. It can serve as a web framework for use by small, medium and large sites.

A lite XOOPS can be used as a personal weblog or journal. For this purpose, you can do a standard install, and use its News module only. For a medium site, you can use modules like News, Forum, Download, Web Links etc to form a community to interact with your members and visitors. For a large site as an enterprise one, you can develop your own modules such as eShop, and use XOOPâ€™s uniform user management system to seamlessly integrate your modules with the whole system.

Pricing: Free
Source: http://www.xoops.org

The Movable Type Open Source Project was announced in conjunction with the launch of the Movable Type 4 Beta on June 5th, 2007. The MTOS Project is a community and Six Apart driven project that will produce an open source version of the Movable Type Publishing Platform that will form the core of all other Movable Type products.

Pricing: Free
Source: http://www.movabletype.org

MODx is 100% buzzword compliant, and makes child’s play of building content managed sites with validating, accessible CSS layouts â€“ hence Ajax CMS. It empowers its users to build engaging “Web 2.0? sites today, with its pre-integrated MooTools, Scriptaculous and Prototype libraries. If you’re a CSS designer or Ajax aficionado, this is the CMS for you; and if you like what you see today, you’ll love what’s coming.

Techies call MODx a Content Management Framework (”CMF“): equal parts custom web app builder and Content Management System (”CMS“). With a flexible API and a robust event override system, MODx makes building engaging web projects straightforward â€” or changing core functionality without hacking the core code possible. Custom tweaks won’t leave you pulling out your hair when it’s time to upgrade.

Pricing: Free
Source: http://www.modxcms.com/

sNews is a completely free, standards compliant, PHP and MySQL driven content management system. Consisting of only one small core file, sNews is extremely lightweight, easy to install, and easy to use via a simple web interface.

With sNews you can create a website that consists of dynamic pages and have a blog at the same time. sNews has a front page option and categories for you to categorize your articles. Corporate CMS or a personal blog - your choice.

sNews uses search engine friendly URLs throughout, to make your website truly loved by Google and other search engines (as well as your visitors). This makes a sNews driven site highly Search Engine Optimized from the get-go and will greatly assist in your site obtaining a good SEO ranking.

Pricing: Free
Source: http://snewscms.com/

OpenCms from Alkacon Software is a professional, easy to use website content management system. OpenCms helps content managers worldwide to create and maintain beautiful websites fast and efficiently.

The fully browser based user interface features configurable editors for structured content with well defined fields. Alternatively, content can be created using an integrated WYSIWYG editor similar to well known office applications. A sophisticated template engine enforces a site-wide corporate layout and W3C standard compliance for all content.

Pricing: Free
Source: http://www.opencms.org/

ocPortal is a CMS (Content Management System) that allows you to create and manage your interactive and dynamic website from an easy to use administration interface. ocPortal is unique by the combination of a vast and diverse range of provided functionality, out-of-the-box usability, and an ability for unlimited customisation.

ocPortal is completely free under an OSI-approved Open Source licence since version 4.0. There are no restrictions on usage, and they don’t keep away any features from users.

Pricing: Free
Source: http://ocportal.com/

Habari is being written with a firm understanding of the current state of blogging. Most other blogging packages have been around long enough that their responses to things like comment spam and Digg site overloads are bolted on after the fact; whereas Habari is being written from the beginning to take these things — and more — into account.

Habari strongly favors open, standard, and documented protocols. Atom, being both open and documented, is the prefered syndication format, and the Atom Publishing Protocol is the prefered means of remote communication with your site. This is a core feature, and not a plugin.

Pricing: Free
Source: http://habariproject.org

dotCMS Core is the most feature complete open source web CMS available today. Available under the GPL, you can freely download the dotCMS system and get up, running and managing web sites and web content in a matter of minutes.

Unlike many other â€œopen sourceâ€� cms, dotCMS is in no way crippled. When you download the dotCMS system, you are getting all of the functions and features needed to begin creating customized, manageable and scalable web sites. This includes so called “advanced”� features such as LDAP/AD integration, clustering support, online templating, Web2.0 Calendaring and the structured content engine.

Pricing: Free
Source: http://www.dotcms.org/

Symphony is a web publishing system made for web developers. It gives you all the power and flexibility you’ll need, while keeping out of your way.

Symphony lets you organise everything the way you like, from your publishing environment to your website’s URL structure. Built to be versatile and customisable, Symphony really is what you make of it.

Symphony’s templating engine is pure XSLT goodness. XSLT is a standard recommended by the W3C, so learning Symphony means that youâ€™re learning skills that you can also use outside of the system. If you already know the XML and CSS standards, then chances are you should be able to quickly pick up XSLT.

Pricing: Free
Source: http://symphony-cms.com/

Source: http://www.blogperfume.com/best-free-weblog-software-other-than-wordpress/

Tips on how to improve the PageRank

2009-03-26T08:58:00.000+07:00

LINKS!
------
PageRank is a calculation of the popularity of a web page, based on
the quality and number of links that point to it. Basically a link to
your page is seen as a vote of confidence, and a vote from a site that
has high PageRank is much more valuable. Nobody except Google search
engineers know exactly how it is calculated, but it is quite certain
that a link from a PR7 site is worth dozens of links from PR2 sites.

Google say:

"PageRank Technology: PageRank performs an objective measurement of
the importance of web pages by solving an equation of more than 500
million variables and 2 billion terms. Instead of counting direct
links, PageRank interprets a link from Page A to Page B as a vote for
Page B by Page A. PageRank then assesses a page's importance by the
number of votes it receives.

PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote,
as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus
giving the linked page greater value. Important pages receive a higher
PageRank and appear at the top of the search results. Google's
technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a
page's importance. There is no human involvement or manipulation of
results, which is why users have come to trust Google as a source of
objective information untainted by paid placement. "
://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html

To see the PageRank of a page, you need to install the Google Toolbar:
http://toolbar.google.com/

So the best way to improve your PageRank is to get some links from
high PR sites. You are correct in assuming that link exchanges are not
the way to go - they are forbidden in Google Guidelines:

"Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's
ranking or PageRank."
://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

Link swapping is also very easy for Google to detect, seeing as their
algorithm revolves around link relationships.

Buy Links
---------
A growing trend is to approach a webmaster of a high PR site and offer
to pay for a link. Google has no way of determining whether money
changed hands, and the link will be as valuable as an organic one.

I sell one link on my PR6 site for $25 a month, but if the ad was less
relevant to my site's content I'd charge much more.

Directories
-----------
The biggest directories have quite high PageRank. Open Directory is
the best free directory to be listed in. A category that seems to be
suited to your site has a PageRank of 4:

http://dmoz.org/Shopping/Health/Disabilities/Assistive_Technology/Mobility_and_Transportation/Canes_and_Walking_Sticks/
(Click on "suggest URL" at the top of the page)

The corresponding category at Yahoo has PR5, but also costs $299 to be included:
http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Shopping_and_Services/Disabilities/Assistive_Technology/Mobility_Assistance/Walking_Assistance/
(Click on "Suggest a Site" at the top)

Copy your Competitors
---------------------
Use discretion (ie avoid link exchanges), but otherwise it's quite
easy to find out where your competitors get their links from. Visit
their homepage, and in the Page Info dropdown box of the Google
Toolbar, select "Backward Links". You will then see a list of pages
that link to the page you are visiting. It won't list every page, but
does list all the ones worth getting a link from.

The two directory categories mentioned above are a good place to find competitors.

Asking for a link is quite simple:

1) Compliment them on their site
2) Suggest your site as one their visitors might find useful

Usually a site has a email address displayed, otherwise just try the
standard webmaster@blah.com

Example:

Looking at the Backward Links for Thomas Fetterman's site, we see they
are linked to from:
http://www.abledata.com/text2/assistiv.htm#Walking

A visit to their homepage finds a link to their Contact Us page:
http://www.abledata.com/text2/contact.htm

The site is regularly updated, links are free, the page has PR5. A
link from just that page could improve your site's PageRank.

Your Site
---------
Looks pretty good from a search engine point of view. In general I
wouldn't change a thing. Having a Headline
on each page that
is the same as the page title could improve things slightly.

More content is always a plus, but obviously difficult to come up with.

Hosting
-------
In my experience changing hosting companies would not normally affect
PageRank, but could do if they require that you link to them from your
site, or if they secretly use cloaking (rare, but a GA Researcher
recently uncovered a hosting service that did this). I wouldn't worry
about it.

As I indicated in my initial comment, it is links that you need. Get a
handful of PR5+ links and you should climb in PR and in the search
results.

Source: http://tungblog.atikomtrirat.com/2009/03/tips-on-how-to-improve-pagerank.html

Lesson (2): Crawler-Based Search Engines

2009-03-09T17:54:00.000+07:00

In the previous lesson we discussed how crawler-based engines work. Typically, special crawler software visits your site and reads the source code of your pages. This process is called "crawling" or "spidering". Your page is then compressed and put into the search engine's repository which is called an "index". This stage is referred to as "indexing". Finally, when someone submits a query to the search engine, it pulls your page out of the index and gives it a rank among the other results it has found for this query. This is called "ranking".

Usually for indexing, crawler-based engines consider many more factors than those they can find on your pages. Thus, before putting your page into an index, a crawler will look at how many other pages in the index are linking to yours, the text used in links that point to you, what the PageRank is of linking pages, whether the page is present in directories under related categories, etc. These "off-page" factors are a significant consideration when a page is evaluated by a crawler-based engine. While theoretically, you can artificially increase your page relevance for certain keywords by adjusting the corresponding areas of your HTML code, you have much less control over other pages in the Internet that are linking to you. Thus, off-page relevance prevails in the eyes of a crawler.

In this lesson, we look at the main spider-based search engines, and learn how we can get each of them to index our site and rank it highly. Although this step does not closely deal with the optimization process itself, we provide information on how each search engine looks at your pages so that you can come back to this section for later reference.

Google (http://www.google.com)

Google is the number one search engine among such giants of the SEs' market as Yahoo! and Live Search. Its search share is over 60%. Google indexes billions of Web pages, so that users can search for the information they desire. Plus it creates services and tools including Web applications, advertising networks and solutions for businesses to hold on the leading position successfully.

You can submit your site to Google here: http://www.google.com/addurl/ and your site will probably be indexed in around 1-2 months.

Alternatively, you can sign in to your Google account, go to Google Webmaster Tools and submit a sitemap of your site. For more info on creating sitemaps, please refer to Lesson "Creating a Search Engine Friendly Site Map".

Please keep in mind that Google may ignore your submission request for a significant period of time. Even if it happens to crawl your site, it may not actually index it if there are no links pointing to it. However, if Google finds your site by following the links from other pages that have already been indexed and are regularly re-spidered, chances are you will be included without any submission. These chances are much higher if Google finds your site by reading a directory listing, such as DMOZ (www.dmoz.org).

So submit your site and it may help, but links are the best way to get indexed.

In the past, Google typically performed monthly updates called the "Google Dance" among the experts. At the beginning of the month, a deep crawl of the web took place, then after a couple of weeks the PageRank for the retrieved pages was calculated, and at the end of the month the index database was finally updated. Nowadays, Google has switched to an incremental daily update model (sometimes referred to as everflux) so the concept of Google dance is quickly becoming historical.

The "Dance" took place from time to time but only when they need to make major changes to their algorithm. For example, their dance in November 2003 (known as Google Florida Update) was actually their first after about six months. In January 2004, Google started another dance (Austin Update) where pages that had disappeared during the "Florida" showed up again, and many pages that hadn't disappeared the first time were gone.

In February 2004 Google updated once more and things settled down. Most people who had lost pages saw them return and although the results were rather different than those shown before Florida, at least pages didn't seem to disappear for no reason.

Google claims to have 1 trillion (as in 1,000,000,000,000) unique URLs in its index. The engine constantly adds new pages to the index database - usually it takes around two days to list a new page after the Googlebot (Google's spider) has crawled it. The Google team works industriously towards algorithm perfection to keep their leading position amongst search engines.

These days, Google maintains a database which is continuously updated. Matt Cutts (head
of Google's Webspam team) reported in his personal blog that : «Google switched to an index that was incrementally updated every day (or faster). Instead of a monolithic monthly event, the Google would refresh some of its index pretty much every day, which generated much smaller day-to-day changes that some people called everflux.»

Google has lots of so-called "regional" branches, such as "Google Australia", "Google Canada," etc. These branches are modifications of their index database stored on servers located in the corresponding regions. They are meant to further adjust search results to searcher needs: when you're searching, Google detects your IP address (and thus approximate location) and feeds the results from the most appropriate index database.

Submission to the "Main Google" will list your site in all its regional branches - after Google indexes you, of course.

Google has a number of crawlers to do the spidering. They all have the name "GoogleBot" but they come from a number of different IP addresses. You can see if Google has visited your site by looking through your server logs: just find the IP address something like 82.110.xxx.xx and most probably you will see the user-agent defined as GoogleBot ("Googlebot/2.1+(+http://www.google.com/bot.html)"). Verify that ip address using the reverse DNS lookup to find out the registered name of the machine. Generally all Google crawlers host names will end with 'googlebot.com'

Google is by far the most important search engine. Apart from their own site receiving 350 million searches per day, they also provide the search results for AOL Search, Netscape Search, Ask.com, Iwon, ICQ Search and MySpace Search. For this reason, most optimizers first focus on Google. Generally, this makes sense.

How to optimize for Google

Most important for Google are three factors: PageRank, link anchor text and semantics.

PageRank is an absolute value which is regularly calculated by Google for each page it has in its index. Later in this course we will give you a detailed description, but for now it's just important to know that the number of links you've got from other sites outside your domain matters greatly, as well as the link quality. The latter means that in order to give you some weight, the sites linking to yours must themselves have high PageRank, be content-rich and regularly updated.

MiniRank/Local Rank is a modification of the PageRank based on the link structure of your single site only. Since search engines rank pages, not sites, certain pages of your site will rank higher for given keywords than others. Local Rank has a significant influence on the general PageRank.

Anchor text is the text of the links that point to your pages. For instance, if someone links to you with the words "see this great website", this is a useless link. However, let's say you sell car tyres and a link from another site to yours says "car tyres from leading brands", such a link will boost your rank when someone searches for car tyres on Google.

Semantics is a new factor that appears to have made the biggest difference to the results. This term refers to the meaning of words and their relationships. Google bought a company called Applied Semantics back in 2003 and has been using the technology for their AdSense contextual advertising program. According to the principles of applied semantics, the crawler attempts to define which words mean the same thing and which ones are always used together.

For example, if there are a certain number of pages in Google's index saying that an executive desk is a piece of office furniture, Google associates the two phrases. After this, a page about executive desks using the keywords "office furniture" won't show up in a search for the keywords ''executive desk". On the other hand, a page that mentions "executive desk" will rank better if it mentions "office furniture".

Now, there are two other terms related to Google's way of ranking pages: Hilltop and Sandbox.

Hilltop is an algorithm that was created in 1999. Basically, it looks at the relationship between "Expert" and "Authority" pages. An "Expert" is a page that links to lots of other relevant documents. An "Authority" is a page that has links pointing to it from the "Expert" pages.

In theory, Google would find "Expert" pages and then the pages that they link to would rank well. Pages on sites like Yahoo, DMOZ, college sites and library sites would be considered experts.

Sandbox refers to Google's algorithm which detects how old your page is and how long ago it has been updated. Usually pages with stale content tend to gradually slip down the result list, while new pages just crawled initially have higher positions than they would if based on PageRank only. However, some time after gaining boosted positions, new website disappear from the top places in search results, since Google wants to verify whether your website is really continued and was not created with the sole purpose to benefit from artificially high rankings over the short term. The period when a website is unable to make it to the top of search results is referred to as "being in the sandbox". This can last from 6 months to one year, then the positions usually restore gradually. However, not all brand new site owners observe the sandbox effect on their own sites, which has led to discussions on whether the sandbox filter really exists.

On-page factors considered by Google

Now that we've examined off-page factors that have primary importance for Google, let's take a look at on-page factors that should be given attention before submitting to Google.

Google does not consider the META keyword tag for counting relevancy. While your META description tag contents can be used by Google as the description of your site in the search results, the META description does not have any influence for relevancy count.

Nowadays META tags don't influence website position in search results absolutely. They can be of use as additional information source about the Web page for surfers only.

When targeting optimization for Google, be sure to use your keywords in the following:

Your domain name - important!
First words of the TITLE tag; HTML heading tags H1 to H6;
ALT text as long as you also describe the image;
Quality content on your index page. Try to make the length of your home page at least 300 words, however, don't hide anything from visitors' eyes (VERY IMPORTANT!).
Link text for outgoing links.
Drop-down form boxes created with the help of the SELECT tag.
Finally, try to have some keywords in BOLD.

Additionally, try to center your pages around one central theme. Use synonyms of your important keyword phrases. Keep everything on the page on that ONE main topic, and provide good, solid content.

Pages that are optimized for Google will score best when there are at least a few links to outside sites that are related to your topic because this establishes your page's reputation as an authority. Google also measures how many websites outside your domain have links pointing to your site and factor in an "importance rating" for each of those referring sites. The more popular a site appears to a search engine, the higher up in the search listings they will place it.

According to Craig Silverstein with Google,

"External links that you grant from a particular page on your website can become diluted. In other words, if you place 10,000 links to other Web pages from a particular page of your website, each link is less powerful than if you were to link to only five other Web pages. Or, the contribution value to another website of each individual link is weakened the more you grant."

Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com)

You can submit your URL to Yahoo! Search for free here: http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request (note: you need to register at their portal first) and it will be indexed in about 1-2 months.

Yahoo! is still the most popular site on the Web, according to its traffic rank reported by Alexa (www.alexa.com). Nevertheless, in terms of the number of searches performed Google carries the day.

Yahoo! provides results in a number of ways. First, it has one of the most complete directories on the Web. There's also Yahoo! Search, which lists results in a way similar to other crawler-based engines. Here, in this section on crawler-based engines, we deal with the second service.

Sponsored results are found at the top, side, and bottom of the search results pages fed by Yahoo!. Yahoo! now owns its Yahoo! Search Marketing pay engine and provides search results to AltaVista, AllTheWeb and Lycos.

The search results at Yahoo! changed in February 2004. For the previous couple of years, Google was their search-results supplier. Nowadays, Yahoo! is using its own database. Yahoo! bought engines that had earlier pioneered the search world, Yahoo! Search officially provides all search engines acquired through these acquisitions with its own results. Therefore, when you optimize your Web pages for Yahoo!, there's a good chance of appearing in the top results of other popular search engines, such as AllTheWeb and AltaVista.

To find out if Yahoo's spider has visited your site, search the following information in your server logs. Their crawler is now called Yahoo Slurp (formerly, it was just Slurp). For each request from 'Yahoo! Slurp' user-agent, you can start with the IP address (i.e. 74.6.67.218). Then check if it really is coming from Yahoo! Search using the reverse DNS lookup. The name of all Yahoo! Search crawlers will end with 'crawl.yahoo.net,'.

To rank well in Yahoo, you need to do the same things that help your rankings in Google. Off-page factors (link popularity, anchor text, etc.) are very important. Some experts consider it easier to rank well on Yahoo because your own internal links are more important and there also appears to be no requirement for link relevancy. Whereas Google claims that the PageRank of the relevant linking sites is worth more than the PageRank of irrelevant sites, links don't need to be relevant to do well on Yahoo.

Like all other search engines, they'll list you for free if you get links to your site. Much like Google, their crawler is very active and updates listings on a daily basis. However, it can take a few weeks for Yahoo to list new pages after they have found and crawled through referring links. The pages that have already been included in the listing are updated much more often, usually every several days.

In March 2004, Yahoo launched its paid inclusion program called Site Match. You can find out details about Yahoo's paid inclusion program here: http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/srch/index.php and the pricing here - http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/srchsb/sse_pr.php?mkt=us

Site Match guarantees your site will appear in non-sponsored search results on Yahoo!, and other portals such as AltaVista and AllTheWeb.

Let's review some quick insights into the factors on your pages that will help you rank higher in Yahoo: use keywords in your domain name and use keywords in the TITLE tag. Your title must include your most important keyword phrase once toward the beginning of the tag. Don't split the important keyword phrase in your title!

META Keywords and META Description tags.

The Yahoo! family of search engines DOES NOT consider META tags when estimating relevancy. Use keywords in heading tags H1 through H6; Use keywords in link anchor text and ALT attributes of your images; the body main content and page names (URLs) need to have keywords in them too; the recommended keyword weight in the BODY tag for Yahoo is 5%, maximum 8%. A catalog page with lots of links, for instance a site map, will help a lot for your indexing and ranking by Yahoo!.

You can submit just the main page to Yahoo!, and let its spider find, crawl, and index the rest of your pages. If it doesn't find an important page, however, make sure you submit it manually.

Like with all of the other engines, solid and legitimate link popularity is considered important by Yahoo's spider as a ranking factor.

Yahoo! frowns upon having satellite sites that revolve around the theme of a main site. For example, if you sell office furniture and set up a main company site and then plant several satellite sites for each kind of furniture, it may seem suspicious to Yahoo!. Therefore, make sure that each site is a stand-alone site and serves a unique purpose, and that it's valuable to both the search engines and your users.

As with any other search engine it is vitally important for Yahoo! that you create valuable content for your search visitors.

Windows Live Search (www.live.com)

You can submit your site to Live Search (formerly known as MSN Search) for free at http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx, however they are sure to find it without your submission if you have links from sites already listed there.

MSN stands for Microsoft Network and was initially meant to be Microsoft's solution for Web search, among other goals. Nevertheless, it was powered by Inktomi's results and did not have its own crawler.

Since February 2005, MSN switched from another engine result base and introduced its own Web crawler. And their next significant step was on September 11, 2006 when Live Search release replaced MSN Search. For this moment Live Search is one of the most popular of world-class search engines, with around 11% of all search traffic. It definitely makes sense to target placement at the top of Live Search's listings as the amount of traffic you will receive as a result is considerable. However, with Live Search it's especially important to avoid spam methods since they claim to use a sophisticated series of technologies to fight against even potential spammers. PC magazine has published an article that states:

"Spammers are increasingly trying to weasel their way into search engine results, and Microsoft hopes that filtering them out can be one area where its tool can outshine Google's."
For more information on this article, visit http://www.pcmag.co.uk/news/1155758.

The information for finding the Live Search spider in your server visit logs is as follows: The Spider's name is MSNBot, with the IP addresses something like 65.55.xx.xx and 65.64.xx.xx, host msnbot.msn.com, and user agent "msnbot/1.1 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)".

At this stage, the general rules of optimizing for Live Search would be similar to the optimization rules for other search engines. Get your site listed in the directories, obtain solid and quality link popularity, balance your keyword theme. You may also consider purchasing an ad from Live Search to get listed in the sponsored results. Live Search equally treats both off-page and on-page factors when ranking pages.

FAST Search / AllTheWeb and AltaVista (http://www.alltheweb.com)

FAST (now called Fast Search and Transfer) is a Norwegian company that specializes in search and filter technology solutions. Some time ago it built the AllTheWeb search engine. In 2003, AltaVista and AllTheWeb were bought out by the Overture engine, the second being bought from FAST Search. Overture, in its turn, was purchased by Yahoo!. It is through this route that AllTheWeb has joined the Yahoo! family of search engines. As a result, AllTheWeb's spider is no longer crawling the Web, and you can no longer submit to the engine. Its XML feed and paid inclusion programs have been changed over to Yahoo! Search Marketing programs. Submitting to Yahoo! Search (and getting indexed there) will get your pages in AltaVista, Yahoo! Web Results, AllTheWeb, Live Search, HotBot and other engines.

AltaVista (http://www.altavista.com) was once a big player in the search industry. Until about seven years ago they could claim to be the most used search engine. Since that time, this engine has lost its independence and much of its popularity. Nowadays, it's sending very little traffic to websites. As with AllTheWeb, it was purchased by Yahoo together with Overture.

Ask.com (http://www.ask.com)

Ask.com (formerly Ask Jeeves) is the last crawler-based search engine we are going to speak about. Ask.com supplies its search results to the Iwon search engine and is a member of the Google family of search engines.

It was designed as Ask Jeeves, where "Jeeves" is the name of the "gentleman's personal gentleman", or valet (illustrated by Marcos Sorensen), fetching answers to any question asked. On September 23, 2005 the company announced plans to phase out Jeeves and on February 27, 2006 the character was disassociated with Ask.com (according to the Wikipedia).

Ask.com has acquired DirectHit and Teoma which were big players in the search industry too. DirectHit was a search engine that provided results based on click popularity. Therefore, sites that received the most clicks for a particular keyword were listed at the top. Teoma was also unique due to its link popularity algorithm. Teoma claimed that it produces well ordered and relevant search results by initially eliminating all the irrelevant sites and then considering the popularity of only those that relate to the search subject in the first place.

Optimizing for Google will guarantee your appearance on the Ask.com results along with the other large engines of Google's family (AOL, Netscape and Iwon).

How Much Bandwidth is Required for VoIP Phones?

2009-02-15T17:22:00.001+07:00

A long-standing question for potential VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) consumers is “How much bandwidth does a VoIP phone require to make quality telephone calls?”

First of all, Bandwidth is defined as the ability to transfer data (such as a VoIP telephone call) from one point to another in a fixed amount of time. The higher the bandwidth speed you have, the more data you can send over your Broadband Internet connection.

There are two types of bandwidth at your location: upload bandwidth and download bandwidth. The Upload Bandwidth is the amount of data you can send to the Internet and download bandwidth is the amount of data you can receive from the Internet. The more Internet bandwidth you have from your ISP (Internet Service Provider) the better.

In most cases, the normal VoIP telephone call will use up 90 Kbps (kilobits per second). If you have a Broadband Internet service provider that doesn’t offer much bandwidth then most VoIP providers give you the option to lower the VoIP voice quality by lowering the bandwidth used for VoIP calls to 60 Kbps or, to really conserve your bandwidth, 30 Kbps. Most people can't tell the difference between the three settings. We suggest you use the high sound quality setting (90 Kpbs in most cases), if bandwidth is not an issue. High VoIP voice quality is generally the default setting but if you are running into a situation where your bandwidth is limited then you can adjust your VoIP bandwidth to one of the lower settings. Some consumers with 128 Kbps upload connections can receive less VoIP service quality due to a poor quality ISP (Internet Service Provider). By selecting a lower quality VoIP bandwidth setting, this problem can be avoided.

If you plan on using a VoIP service provider, should you get a DSL or a Cable Internet access provider? In general, DSL upload bandwidth starts at 128k where as Cable Internet upload bandwidth starts at around 600k. Cable Internet is a little bit more expensive, but it is also about 4-5 times faster than residential DSL and a bit friendlier to a VoIP telephone call. Having said that, both DSL and cable modem high-speed services provide sufficient broadband Internet access bandwidth to support any of the top VoIP service providers. If you are experiencing low Broadband Internet Service provider bandwidth, we suggest you try Packet8 VoIP. Packet8 VoIP boasts an advanced compression technology in which each active voice line uses approximately only 23Kbps of total data throughput, upstream and downstream.

The amount of bandwidth that a VoIP provider requires to make a quality telephone call is only one thing to consider when choosing a VoIP service provider. In fact, there are many things to consider when choosing a VoIP provider. An educated consumer generally results in a satisfied consumer.

Things to Consider When Selecting a VoIP Provider

2009-02-15T17:19:00.000+07:00

The following are very important factors to consider when you are selecting a Voice over IP provider. Educate yourself and be informed before you choose.

Monthly costs: A VoIP provider can save you up to 75% on your telephone/long distance expenses. There are many Voice over IP providers out there so it will benefit you from shopping around. Unlimited calling packages can range from $19.95/month to as high as $54.95/month. Usually the lower priced providers have more customers and are able to offer the service at a lower price due to a lower overhead per subscriber

VoIP Product Features: Not all VoIP providers are created equal. Voice over IP offers a great value to the consumers because of the drastically reduced long distance costs as well as inexpensive local phone service with lots of enhanced features. Some providers offer more features than others. Features like Call Waiting, 3 Way Calling, etc. are usually included in the VoIP monthly cost where as the traditional phone companies will charge up to and above $5/month per feature. When shopping for a VoIP provider, be sure to compare VoIP providers by features as well as by monthly price.

Keeping Your Number: Some providers allow you to transfer (port) your current phone number to the VoIP service and some providers do not. It is not recommended to switch your home number to the VoIP service immediately. It is recommended that you try out the service and see if you are satisfied before you request that your current number be switched. Keep in mind that if you have DSL service, you must retain a phone number with the service provider of the DSL because the DSL service is provided over that telephone line. If you want to get rid of your current phone company all together, then we suggest you use a Cable Internet Service Provider.

911 Service: Most of the Voice over IP carriers offer E911 service, but not all. Be sure to check if the Voice over IP provider offers E911 because it is not a given. If the VoIP provider does not offer E911, then we suggest that you either have a cell phone or traditional landline to use in case of an emergency. (Note: It is also important to point out that if you take your VoIP phone when traveling, E911 has no way of knowing where you are when you call 911 if you are away from the registered address.)

International Calling: If you make a lot of international calls, you will want to do a lot of research on International Rates as they vary by provider. There are a few carriers that offer unlimited calling to certain countries.

Money Back Guarantee: Since VoIP is a relatively new product; most all VoIP providers will offer a free money back guarantee. Be sure to check with each provider as we have seen the money back guarantees range from a 14-day to a 30-day money back guarantee. (Note: Be sure to keep the original packaging that your equipment came in just in case you need to send it back)

This is only a short list. In fact, there are many things to consider when choosing a VoIP provider. An educated consumer generally results in a satisfied consumer.

Lesson (1): Classification of Search Engines

2009-01-16T11:08:00.000+07:00

The term "search engine" (SE) is often misused to describe both directories and pure search engines. In fact, they are not the same; the difference lies in how result listings are generated.

There are four major search engine types you should know about. They are:

crawler-based (traditional, common) search engines;
directories (mostly human-edited catalogs);
hybrid engines (META engines and those using other engines' results);
pay-per-performance and paid inclusion engines.

Crawler-based SEs, also referred to as spiders or Web crawlers, use special software to automatically and regularly visit websites to create and supplement their giant Web page repositories.

This software is referred to as a "bot", "robot", "spider", or "crawler". All these terms denote the same concept. These programs run on the search engines. They browse pages that already exist in their repositories, and find your site by following links from those pages. Alternatively, after you have submitted pages to a search engine, these pages are queued for scanning by a spider; it finds your page by looking through the lists of pages pending review in this queue.

After a spider has found a page to scan, it retrieves this page via HTTP (like any ordinary Web surfer who types an URL into a browser's address field and presses "enter"). Just like any human visitor, the crawling software leaves a record on your server about its visit. Therefore, it?s possible to know from your server log when a search engine has dropped in on your online estate.

Your Web server returns the HTML source code of your page to the spider. The spider then reads it (this process is referred to as "crawling" or "spidering") ? and this is where the difference begins between a human visitor and crawling software.

While a human visitor can appreciate the quality graphics and impressive Flash animation you've loaded onto your page, a spider won't. A human visitor does not normally read the META tags, a spider can. Only seasoned users might be curious enough to read the code of the page when seeking additional information about the Web page. A human visitor will first notice the largest and most attractive text on the page. A spider, on the other hand, will give more value to text that's closest to the beginning and end of the page, and the text wrapped in links.

Perhaps you've spent a fortune creating a killer website designed to immediately captivate your visitors and gain their admiration. You've even embedded lots of quality Flash animation and JavaScript tricks. Yet, a search engine spider is a robot which only sees that there are some images on the page and some code embedded into the "script" tag that it is instructed to skip. These design elements are additional obstacles on its way to your content. What's the result? The spider ranks your page low, no one finds it on the search engine, and no one is able to appreciate the design.

SEO (search engine optimization) is the solution for making your page more search-engine friendly. The optimization is mostly oriented towards crawler-based engines, which are the most-popular on the Internet. We're not telling you to avoid design innovations; instead, we will teach you how to properly combine them with your optimization needs.

Let's return to the way a spider works. After it reads your pages, it will compress them in a way that is convenient to store in a giant repository of Web pages called a search engine index. The data are stored in the search engine index the way that makes it possible to quickly determine whether this page is relevant to a particular query and to pull it out for inclusion in the result page shown in response to the query. The process of placing your page in the index is referred to as "indexing". After your page has been indexed, it will appear on search engine results pages for the words and phrases most common on the indexed Web page. Its position in the list, however, may vary.

Later, when someone searches the engine for particular terms, your page will be pulled out of the index and included in the search results. The search engine now applies a sophisticated technique to determine how relevant your page is to these terms. It considers many on-page and off-page factors and the page is given a certain position, or rank, within other results found for the surfer's query. This process is called "ranking".

Google (www.google.com) is a perfect example of a crawler-based SE.

Human-edited directories are different. The pages that are stored in their repository are added solely through manual submission. The directories, for the most part, require manual submission and use certain mechanisms (particularly, CAPTCHA images) to prevent pages from being submitted automatically. After completing the submission procedure, your URL will be queued for review by an editor, who is, luckily, a human.

When directory editors visit and read your site, the only decision they make is to accept or reject the page. Most directories do not have their own ranking mechanism ? they use various obvious factors to sort URLs, such as alphabetic sequence or Google PageRank^TM (explained later in this course). It is very important to submit a relevant and precise description to the directory editor, as well as take other parts of this manual submission seriously.

Spider-based engines often use directories as a source of new pages to crawl. As a result, it's self-evident in SEO that you should treat directory submission and directory listings as seriously and responsibly as possible.

While a crawler-based engine would visit your site regularly after it has first indexed it, and detect any change you make to your pages, it's not the same with directories. In a directory, result listings are influenced by humans. Either you enter a short description of your website, or the editors will. When searching, only these descriptions are scanned for matches, so website changes do not affect the result listing at all.

As directories are usually created by experienced editors, they generally produce better (at least better filtered) results. The best-known and most important directories are Yahoo (www.yahoo.com) and DMOZ (www.dmoz.org).

Hybrid engines. Some engines also have an integrated directory linking to them. They contain websites which have already been discussed or evaluated. When sending a search query to a hybrid engine, the sites already evaluated are usually not scanned for matches; the user has to explicitly select them. Whether a site is added to an engine's directory generally depends on a mixture of luck and content quality. Sometimes you may "apply" for a discussion of your website, but there?s no guarantee that it will be done.

Yahoo (www.yahoo.com) and Google (www.google.com), although mentioned here as examples of a directory and crawler respectively, are in fact hybrid engines, as are nowadays most major search machines. As a rule, a hybrid search engine will favor one type of listing over another. For example, Yahoo is more likely to present human-powered listings, while Google prefers its crawled listings.

Meta Search Engines. Another approach to searching the vast Internet is the use of a multi-engine search, or meta-search engine that combines results from a number of search engines at the same time and lays them out in a formatted result page. A common or natural language request is translated to multiple search engines, each directed to find the information the searcher requested. The search engine's responses thus obtained are gathered into a single result list. This search type allows the user to cover a great deal of material in a very efficient way, retaining some tolerance for imprecise search questions or keywords.

Examples of multi-engines are MetaCrawler (http://www.metacrawler.com) and DogPile (http://www.dogpile.com). MetaCrawler refers your search to seven of the most popular search engines (including AltaVista and Lycos), then compiles and ranks the results for you.

Pay-for-performance and paid inclusion engines. As is clear from the title, with these engines you have no way other than to pay a recurring or one-time fee to keep your site either listed, re-spidered, or top-ranked for keywords of your choice. There are very few search engines that solely focus on paid listings. However, most major search engines offer a paid listing option as a part of their indexing and ranking system.

Unlike paid inclusion where you just pay to be included in search results, in an advertising program listings are guaranteed to appear in response to particular search terms, and the higher your bid, the higher your position will be for these terms. Paid placement listings can be purchased from a portal or a search network. Search networks are often set up in an auction environment where keywords and phrases are associated with a cost-per-click (CPC) fee. Such a scheme is referred to as Pay-Per-Click (PPC). Yahoo and Google are the largest paid listing providers, and Windows Live Search (formerly MSN) also sells paid placement listings.

So here's what you should remember from this lesson:

Search engines (SEs) are classified into crawlers, directories, META engines and paid-inclusion engines.
Crawler-based SEs use software called robots, spiders, or crawlers to add new pages to its database which is called an index. Directories use humans to manually fill their databases.
After your site has been included in an index of a crawler-based search engine, you will appear in its results, and your position for a certain search query depends on how relevant the spider finds your page for this query.
Your directory listings are quite influential to your positions in crawling search engines.

Part 1: Understanding Search Engines

2009-01-16T10:53:00.001+07:00

This step is an introduction into search engines and the relationships between them. This information is valuable in helping SEOs understand how site rankings in one search engine / directory can influence rankings in other engines.

Throughout this course, (and commonly used on the Internet as well) the term "SE" is used as an abbreviation for "search engine(s)".

Search engines are the most popular method for target customers to find you. As such, SEs are the most vital avenue for letting customers find you.

Currently, search engines around the world together receive around 400,000,000 searches per day. The searches are done with the help of keywords: as a rule, people type a short phrase consisting of two to five keywords to find what they are looking for. It may be information, products, or services.

(For more information on the share of world searches received by major search engines per day, see http://www.freeseosemtraining.com/blog/search-engine-market-share-july-2007.htm).

In response to this query, a search engine will pick from its huge database of Web pages those results it considers relevant for the Web surfer's terms, and display the list of these results to the surfer. The list may be very long and include several million results (remember that nowadays the number of pages on the Web reaches 2.1 trillion, i.e. 2,100,000,000,000); so the results are displayed in order of their relevancy and broken into many pages (most commonly 10 results per page). Most Web surfers rarely go further than the third page of results, unless they are considerably interested in a wide range of materials (e.g. for a scientific research). One reason for this is that they commonly find what they look for on those first pages without the needing to dive in any deeper.

That's why a position among the first 30 results (or "top-30 listing") is a coveted goal.

There used to be a great variety of search engines, but now after major reshuffles and partnerships there are just several giant search monopolies that are most popular among Web surfers and which need to be targeted by optimizers.

There are – and the search engines are aware of this – more popular searches and less popular searches. For instance, a search on the word "myrmecology" is conducted on the Web much more rarely than a search for "Web hosting". Search engines make money by offering special high positions (most often called "sponsored results") for popular terms, ensuring that a site will appear to Web surfers when they search for this term, and that it will have the best visibility. The more popular the term, the more you will have to pay for such a listing.

In this step, we provide insight into how search engines work, how they relate to each other and how it can be of use for you and your Web business.

Stage 1: Search Engine Marketing

2009-01-16T10:41:00.001+07:00

Search Marketing has become a buzzword that is now heard all over the place many times a day. Here we provide an exact definition of what it refers to, and how it relates to both Web Search and Web Marketing.

Search Marketing is also known as Search Engine Marketing (SEM), and as such we will refer to is as SEM throughout this course. The definitions that follow are the basics; if you are an expert / advanced Search Marketer, you can skip these terms; otherwise we recommend that you read and understand them.

Search Marketing is a part of business marketing efforts that is aimed at increasing traffic (the number of visitors) to the website from the search engines. Additionally, it addresses conversion (the percent of visitors who become buyers). The first is achieved by increasing search engine visibility, i.e. the position of your site in search engine results for certain keywords that people type in the search box to obtain these results.

For instance, if someone wants to find and buy a digital camera, they will go to a search engine such as Google and type "digital camera" in the search box. Google will list, in this case, 138 million results (these are the real figures extracted while creating this course). If you sell digital cameras or offer any related services, your site may be listed among these 138,000,000 results. Here, everything depends on how deep you are. If you are on the first or second page of the search results, it's more likely that such visibility will bring many visitors and customers from Google. If you are the 300th result, it's unlikely that anyone at all will come to you from Google.

Together with the power and size of your banner / ad network, your affiliations and partnerships, SE visibility comprises a broader concept - Web visibility (aka online visibility).

Generally, there are two main methods of carrying out SEM: a) Search Engine Optimization (SEO) b) using pay-per-click and paid inclusion listing models. They are briefly depicted in the following lessons.

Although paid inclusion and pay-per-click advertising methods seem like the fastest methods to search engine marketing, website owners prefer to adopt a more time consuming search engine optimization method to obtain better marketing of their website on search engines.

Organic rankings are results that you get for free. That is, you create Web copy and publish it, then after a certain period of time a search engine robot finds it (either by itself or as a result of your submission). Finally, the robot reads your content and puts your site into its index. Now your site will be found by this search engine when people query for some words contained within your pages. Obtained this way, your positions in the result list are called your "organic search engine rankings".

Paid listings are different: pay a search engine and it guarantees the inclusion of your site in the index. Moreover, many search engines offer advanced pay-for-performance programs, such as showing your site / ad in the search results for keywords of your choice. These are the so-called "sponsored" results. Most commonly, you will have to pay a specified rate for each visitor that comes to your site from this search engine that clicks on these ads.

Mastering both methods and their proper combination can provide maximum search engine visibility. Because things keep changing, search engine marketers need to devote a good deal of time staying on top of the SEO industry and its trends.

The aim of SEM is not only to find a proper balance between organic and paid listings, but also to achieve maximum conversion of visitors into loyal customers. Nowadays SEM relies on the statement that it's not the traffic itself that matters, but how targeted and convertible it is. The way your traffic converts also matters a lot – even more than your site rank on a search engine. You can rank worse than a competitor and yet the percentage of your visitors that turn into buyers can be high enough to actually outperform a competitor several times over.

The following are the main goals of Search Engine Marketing:

Improve Web visibility and get as much traffic as possible.
Improve traffic quality: get high rankings for exactly those keywords that bring visitors with the best conversion rate.
Decrease expenditures by switching off advertising for underperforming keywords.

Methods used by Search Marketing

The main methods used for achieving the goals of Search marketing are Search Engine Optimization (for organic listings), Bid Management (for paid listings) and Web Analytics (for both types of listings).

Search Engine Optimization (further referred to in this course as SEO) is about changing the HTML code of your pages and the structure of your site in such a way that when an SE robot reads the site, it can understand that the pages have valuable content related to your keywords, and then rank them high. SEO also tells about ways to increase your link popularity - the number of links from other high-ranked pages to your site. This is important because most search engines consider your link popularity a vital ranking factor.

Bid Management is about controlling bids, i.e. the amount of money you spend maintaining your visibility in the sponsored listings. Usually you try to detect the best converting keywords and keyword groups, in order to increase bids on them; as well as decrease or take off bids on keywords that don't break even. Attention also should be paid to leveraging your paid and organic listings, so to spend less on paid advertising campaigns when you get enough traffic from natural results, and invest in paid advertising when an algorithm changes or strong competitors force you out from the top positions in the organic listings.

Web Analytics (further referred to as WA) is about getting, analyzing and using the information about your visitors, their details, their behavior on your site, the ways they have found your site, the efficiency of referrers and advertising, conversion rates, and, together with all that, eCommerce information.

So here's what you should remember from this lesson:

Search Marketing, or Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, is the aggregate of efforts aiming at increasing your search engine visibility.
SEM deals with your organic and paid listings on the search engines.
SEM includes and uses the techniques of Search Engine Optimization, Bid Management and Web Analytics.

Get Acquainted with Search Engine Optimization Tools

2009-01-16T10:39:00.000+07:00

If you're promoting a website / business online, you can facilitate your work using special software. As with website maintenance, where you normally use some software to build web pages and to upload them to the hosting server, search engine optimization has its industry tools that take many routines off your shoulders.

There are several typical tasks every search marketer has to deal with on the daily basis. The most popular of them are: researching keywords, optimizing keyword positioning across Web pages, submission to search engines, checking rankings, searching for link partners, launching and controlling PPC campaigns, and many others.

What You Should Know before Getting Started with Online Marketing

2009-01-16T10:34:00.001+07:00

The good news is that Internet marketing has rapidly grown and offers a broad array of opportunities for small and large businesses. From the previous introduction we became familiar with the Internet marketing science structure and the particular steps to follow do develop an online business.

At this point, before delving more deeply into the subject, let's define some main terms. Online marketing deals with websites and Web pages, search engines, email and the Internet as the base of the World Wide Web. All of these areas are used to advertise and sell goods and services.

Referencing the original Wikipedia encyclopedia project definitions of our basic terms, they are as follows:

The World Wide Web ("WWW" or simply the "Web") is a system of interlinked, hypertext documents that runs over the Internet.

The hypertext documents, or Web pages, reside on Web servers - special computers that receive requests for Web pages and can "serve" them to the requesting side.

Each Web server, or host, has its unique global address used to find it over the Internet. This address is called an "IP address". A typical IP address looks like four numbers separated by dots. For example, 63.146.123.0 is the address of the server where google.com is situated.

Each server can hold one or many websites. A website (or Web site) is a collection of Web pages, typically bound to a particular domain name or subdomain on the World Wide Web on the Internet. A website is identified uniquely by its domain name, e.g. www.asiawebpro.com.

Domain names are translated into IP addresses by the global DNS - domain name system. That is, when you type www.asiawebpro.com in your browser, the latter first sends a DNS request, and receives the IP address of the server where www.asiawebpro.com is hosted. The browser then connects to that server directly and asks for Web CEO's home page.

Each website is composed of many Web pages. A Web page is a document, typically written in HTML, that is always accessible via HTTP, a protocol that transfers information from the website's server to display in the user's Web browser.

So when a new business is born on the Internet, or when an established brick and mortar enterprise goes online, it starts by creating a website. This is done by purchasing a domain name from an organization accredited to sell domain names, e.g. godaddy.com or register.com. Also, some hosting space must be purchased, so that there's some server ready to store the website. Then, several Web pages are created and linked to each other to make up this website. Finally, the website is linked to the domain name so that everyone can type this domain name in a browser and view these pages.

With a Web browser, a user views Web pages that may contain text, images, and other multimedia and navigates between them using hyperlinks. A client program called a "user agent" retrieves information resources, such as Web pages and other computer files, from Web servers using their URLs.

Most commonly, the user agent is a kind of Web browser: Internet Explorer, Mozilla FireFox, Opera, Netscape, or the program that you use to view this lesson. It retrieves content from remote Web servers and displays it on your computer. You can then follow hyperlinks in each Web page to other World Wide Web resources, whose location (including their domain name) is embedded in the hyperlinks. The act of following hyperlinks from one website to another is referred to as "browsing" or sometimes as "surfing" the Web.

To find a Web page, you can always type its address in the address field of your browser. But what if you don't know the exact address, or want to find all Web pages from different websites on a particular topic?

This is when you use a search engine or directory for the search. There are 3 top search engines: Google, Yahoo! and MSN (Windows Live Search). These search engines are most preferred by Web surfers and every site owner strives to get included in their databases. If people can find your website through search engines, this search engine creates an invaluable source of traffic for you, which translates into income if you sell goods or services.

Actually, search engines are very numerous and differ according to how they work. We have a specific section for "Understanding Search Engines" which includes seven lessons to guide and familiarize you with their core principles.

There is one final point we'll look at, and that is the use of email for your online marketing activity. The topic is email marketing and using this form of communication to send goods and service offers to clients.

Electronic mail (abbreviated "email") is a store and forward method of composing, sending, storing, and receiving messages over electronic communication systems.

Email predates the Internet; existing email systems were a crucial tool in creating the Internet. Email was quickly extended and became additional and highly useful tool for the online marketers.

Email Marketing and other forms of Internet Marketing are depicted in this course to select and master your niche for a future online business.

Introduction into Internet Marketing

2009-01-16T10:22:00.000+07:00

Starting from the early 1990s Internet marketing made an amazing development from simple text-based websites that offered product information into highly evolved and complete online businesses promoting and selling their services on the Internet.

Nowadays, the Internet marketing industry has become a complicated and branchy science involving a great deal of theoretical knowledge in combination with applied techniques. As a science, it ranges from browser-side and server-side programming and coding on one end to marketing and economics on the other.

Internet marketing means the use of the Internet to advertise and sell goods and services. It includes Banner and Text Advertising, Email Marketing, Interactive Advertising, Affiliate Marketing and Search Engine Marketing (including Search Engine Optimization and Pay-Per-Click Advertising).

Our first stage of the Internet Marketing course will start with Search Engine Marketing (SEM) as a specific area of an online marketers' business. Mainly, its purpose is to increase targeted traffic from search engines via organic search engine ranking, paid listing and advertising. Here you'll be shown the main principles of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), link building, and paid advertising campaigns.

Actually, every successful search engine optimizer should be aware of top search engine demands and consider them while creating website and improving on-page and off-page factors for Web pages. There are numerous important factors influencing search engine ranking of a Web page. The SEO division of the course provides profound and consecutive lessons depicting each step of your optimization work. Search Engine Advertising is the last topic of the SEM Stage.

There are certain methods that go beyond SEM that can help improve your site online visibility. These include, for instance, creating and spreading a banner / ad network and / or paid link partnerships, as well as email marketing and building affiliate relationships with other websites.

Email marketing is an independent branch which has to be dealt with separately and does not have much in common with SEM. Email marketing is a subject of our next stage and there we will provide insight into the main direct mail campaign steps and guidelines.

Banner networks relate to SEM as long as they touch upon your link popularity (which is a component of SEM).

In the following stage you'll study the Affiliate Marketing division of Internet Marketing. It is a popular method for promoting web businesses when with few marketing dollars marketers can establish a presence and earn a profit recruiting affiliates. Such partner networks can grow with your company business projects and add its profit to your marketing budget.

The most vital stage of the whole course is Web Analytics. Its role can be hardly underestimated as Web Analytics is an essential measure for continually improving web business performance, advertising campaigns, organic search engine results, ranking positions and others. Generally, Web Analytics deals with the traffic already generated at the previous stages. Its primary goal is to improve traffic quality and enhance conversion.

Although it is possible (and advisable) to understand every theoretical aspect of Internet marketing, in practice you may do much better by specialization in a specific area or technique and simply start your Internet Marketing business. Our last stage provides a proper and clear scheme about how to estimate your potential, find a niche, manage projects and promote your services as online marketer, SEO consultant, etc.

Google's SEO Starter Guide

2008-11-20T13:31:00.000+07:00

Webmasters often ask us at conferences or in the Webmaster Help Group, "What are some simple ways that I can improve my website's performance in Google?" There are lots of possible answers to this question, and a wealth of search engine optimization information on the web, so much that it can be intimidating for newer webmasters or those unfamiliar with the topic. We thought it'd be useful to create a compact guide that lists some best practices that teams within Google and external webmasters alike can follow that could improve their sites' crawlability and indexing.

Our Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide covers around a dozen common areas that webmasters might consider optimizing. We felt that these areas (like improving title and description meta tags, URL structure, site navigation, content creation, anchor text, and more) would apply to webmasters of all experience levels and sites of all sizes and types. Throughout the guide, we also worked in many illustrations, pitfalls to avoid, and links to other resources that help expand our explanation of the topics. We plan on updating the guide at regular intervals with new optimization suggestions and to keep the technical advice current.

So, the next time we get the question, "I'm new to SEO, how do I improve my site?", we can say, "Well, here's a list of best practices that we use inside Google that you might want to check out."

Written by Brandon Falls, Search Quality Team

500 High Paying Adsense Keywords

2008-10-14T12:16:00.000+07:00

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$42.20 consolidate private student loans
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$41.19 federal direct consolidation loan
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$37.31 loan consolidators
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$32.69 mortgage rate quote
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$31.98 car insurance companies
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$24.63 debt consolidation loan
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$23.94 consolidate debt
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$23.16 lasik vision
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$22.43 0 credit cards
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www.tkage.com

#2
Apr 5th 2008, 6:39 am
soniqhost.com
Recent Blog: Where to Host Multiple Domains
Wind Rider

Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: [WTS] Rapidshare Network of Sites @ Sig
Posts: 4,697

Thanks for the list, much be a lot of dwi in austin tx
__________________

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Buy This Link for $125 /Yr

#3
Apr 5th 2008, 9:03 am
izali
Peon

Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Malaysia
Posts: 11

but high keyword mean high competitions ...what should i do?? (

#4
Apr 5th 2008, 9:21 am
tendulkar2
Recent Blog: Google updated the Pageranks, check out your Pagerank now!
Spirit Walker

Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: on Earth
Posts: 1,740

Thanks for the list.
But,I think there are no keywords related to celebrity/entertainment related niche....I have celeb site...
__________________
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#5
Apr 5th 2008, 9:23 am
zorah
Tauren

Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Philippines
Posts: 517

Thanks for the list!
greatly appreciated
__________________
Senior Web Developer
PR2 Online Shopping Directory

#6
Apr 5th 2008, 9:28 am
digitalspace
Banned

Join Date: Feb 2008
Posts: 341

thanks for the list.

#7
Apr 5th 2008, 9:32 am
digitalspace
Banned

Join Date: Feb 2008
Posts: 341

reallly useful list, tks.

#8
Apr 5th 2008, 10:41 am
searchmaster
Berserker

Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Wondering Where
Posts: 186

some addition to the list

Here are some Latest Top Paying Adsense Keywords.

$55.21 federal loan consolidation
$54.90 mesothelioma diagnosis
$54.82 private loan consolidation
$53.96 car insurance quote online
$53.68 bad credit equity loan
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$52.98 student loan consolidation programs
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$51.30 mesothelioma lawyers
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$41.03 nj auto insurance
$40.93 student loan consolidation center
$40.74 refinancing mortgage
$40.54 fort worth dwi
$40.43 federal criminal attorney
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$40.34 mortgage loans
$40.13 whole life quote
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$40.08 direct loan consolidation
$40.04 causes of mesothelioma

$49.78 insurance quote
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$48.87 structured settlement company
$48.86 life insurance quotes
$48.65 san diego dui
$48.64 equity bad
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$45.95 dui attorneys
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$45.55 student load consolidation
$45.48 cheap auto insurance
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$42.23 term life insurance quote online
$42.20 consolidate private student loans
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$82.92 austin dwi
$78.01 school loan consolidation
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$74.93 car insurance quotes
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$74.23 school consolidation
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$67.27 sell structured settlement
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$65.56 austin dwi attorney
$65.44 term life quote
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$62.25 federal consolidation
$61.15 consolidate student loan
$59.82 structured settlement
$59.66 insurance car
$59.21 consolidate school loans
$58.89 consolidation loan rate
$58.71 consolidation of student loans
$58.59 car insurance quote
$57.38 life insurance quote online
$57.31 private student loan consolidation
$57.29 consolidate student loans
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$56.58 the lasik vision institute
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$55.82 insurance quotes
$55.34 life insurance quote

(These keywords and estimated Avg. CPC may vary time to time as per advertisers bid on particular adsense keywords).

Basics of search engine optimization

2008-09-22T22:14:00.000+07:00

To get top result in search engine, there is no shortcut. We need to do hard work, especially for the content of the site. Even if our site is technically perfect for search engine robots, it won’t be effective if we don’t fill the site with interesting contents. Good content can bring return visitors. And we need to add new content regularly, which can give visitors a reason to come back. And we should take care of our keywords to be spelled with standard spelling. And we need to make our page titles are descriptive and relevant. That will be easier for search engines to know what each page is about, and people using search engines can quickly determine whether the document contains what they find. And we should not use graphics for headings because search engines don’t pay too much attention to them. Some search engine robots have diffculties with dynamatically generated URLs. So, we need to use search engine friendly URLs. We need to generate static pages from the dynamic data and store them in the file system, linking to them using simple URLs. And we need to try to get incoming links as much as possible to get top ranking. And we should use valid, semantic, lean, and accessible markup. It’ll make our site faster and more attractive to search engines. And we should to submit our website to some well-known directories and search engines carefully. Don’t use cloaking, link farms, keyword stuffing, or other dubious methods. Otherwise, there is a risk being penalised or even banned from search engines. And we should avoid using frames. Frames will cause problems for the people who find the site via search engines. Some search engines use the contents of the meta description element to describe the site in their search result listings, so we need to make its contents unique and descriptive for every document.

These are just basic tips for search engine optimization. To increase a website’s ranking in search engines,there are many other things we can do. The advices mentioned above are just for a good start.

Oringinal Source
Basics of search engine optimisation

Related News
Top Search Engine Optimization Firm Changes Its Name
Search Engine Marketing: Promote your Products Like Never Before
What’s Search engine optimization aims

osCommerce!

2008-09-22T22:13:00.000+07:00

Summary:
osCommerce is an online-based Open Source e-commerce solution that is available for free under the GNU General Public License. It was started in March 2000 in Germany by project founder and leader Harald Ponce de Leon as The Exchange Project. It can be used on any web server that has PHP and MySQL installed.

osCommerce features a rich set of out-of-the-box online shopping cart functionality that allows store owners to setup, run, and maintain their online stores with minimum effort and with no costs, fees, or limitations involved. While officially osCommerce is still in its development stage, the current Milestone 2.2 release is considered stable. As of November 2007 the osCommerce site says that there are over 12,000 'live' websites using the program.

Source
osCommerce
http://www.oscommerce.com/

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

News References
OsCommerce News
http://www.openpr.com/news/17064/OsCommerce-News.html

PayCash Implements osCommerce Module
http://www.cyphermint.com/news/2004_11_10_oscommerce.html

Store Manager for osCommerce
http://www.magneticone.com/PAGE-56-oscommerce-store-product-manager.html

SEM & PPC

2008-09-22T22:10:00.000+07:00

SEM [Search Engine Marketing] & PPC [Pay Per Click] Advertising

It is truth for the phone directory publishers might not tell you that the phone book is dead now and we can’t remember the last time we used a phone book for anything other than call for a fire or electricity to come and fix the electricity. So if consumer recall for traditional advertising, they no longer call or visit the business. Today consumer prefers to go online for anything like searching information, play game, play e-mail, or even chatting with other people and so on. And if traditional media such as phone books aren’t working so one of the most important and cost effective ways is through Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

SEM is a set of marketing methods to increase the visibility of a Web site in search engine results pages (SERPs). Or we can say that it’s all the stuff you do to get to the top of search engines where people will see you. SEM was not easy to conquer; it’s a complex process that has lots of complexities; however, conquering two main categories (or paying a professional to handle it) will get you started:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a type of Search Engine Marketing related to tweaking web pages and the links into the site, in order to boost the rankings on organic (unpaid) search results. Much of this is done as the Web site is being built in copy, page titles and meta tags.

Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising is a method to quickly drive targeted visitors to a website. It involves purchasing keywords and phrases that people use when searching online for your product or service so that you come up at the top and to the right of unpaid search listings. The important things is which keyword or keyphrases
are going to get you the best results for the money you’re willing to spend.

So next time you’re preparing your yearly marketing budget, ask yourself whether you’re taking advantage of this crucial new medium that’s helping customers find exactly what they’re seeking. If not, perhaps you should consider dumping some of those print ads and phone book listings and writing SEM into your plan. Get on the bus now, before your competitors beat you to it.

Resource : http://www.thecyphersagency.com/pdfs/tca_on_search_engine_marketing.pdf

Tips To Succeed Using Google Adwords
http://www.seoseonews.com/articles/8404/1/Tips-To-Succeed-Using-Google-Adwords/Tips-To-Succeed- Using-Google-Adwords.html

Words To The Wise: Creative Methods for Adding Text Content to Your Website
http://www.seonews.net/articles/article41.php

Introduction to adCenter reporting
http://www.adcentercommunity.com/blogs/advertiser/archive/2008/07/16/Intro-to-adCenter- reporting.aspx

Joomla

2008-09-22T22:04:00.000+07:00

Joomla is a Content Management System (CMS) which help building websites and other powerful online applications. Joomla can change from simple or personal homepages to complex corporate web applications for example, corporate websites or portals, online commerce, or small business websites. Joomla can be used to easily manage every aspect of your website, from adding content and images to updating a product catalog or taking online reservations.

Furthermore, Joomla is an open source solution that is freely available to everybody. Joomla’s package is designed to be easy to install, even for non-programmers. Most people have no trouble with installing and running Joomla application, and there is plenty of support available information for rookies. Joomla community has a growing, active community of more than 150,000 friendly users and developers on our forums eager to help.

Once Joomla is installed and running, it is simple for even non-technical users to add or edit content, update images, and to manage the critical data that makes your company or organization go. Anybody with basic word processing skills can easily learn to manage a Joomla site. Via a simple, browser-based interface user will be able to easily add new press releases or news items, manage staff pages, job listings, product images, and create an unlimited amount of sections or content pages on the web site.

Source :
http://www.joomla.org

Joomla news :
1. Joomla Forms - Live Public Hands On Demo Available Now
http://blog.phil-taylor.com/2008/06/30/joomla-forms-live-public-hands-on-demo-available-now/
2. Joomlashack Releases its latest native Joomla 1.5 Template
http://www.compassdesigns.net/joomla-blog/Joomlashack-Releases-its-latest-native-Joomla-1.5- Template.html
3. JContact Released Powerful Email Newsletters for Joomla 1.5
http://www.compassdesigns.net/joomla-blog/JContact-Released---Powerful-Email-Newsletters-for-Joomla- 1.5.html

Adobe Flex

2008-09-20T12:05:00.000+07:00

Flex is a highly productive, free open source framework for building and maintaining expressive web applications that deploy consistently on all major browsers, desktops, and operating systems. It provides a modern, standards-based language and programming model that supports common design patterns. MXML, a declarative XML-based language, is used to describe UI layout and behaviors, and ActionScript™ 3, a powerful object-oriented programming language, is used to create client logic. In a multi-tiered model, Flex applications serve as the presentation tier. Unlike page-based HTML applications, Flex applications provide a stateful client where significant changes to the view don’t require loading a new page. Similarly, Flex and Flash Player provide many useful ways to send and load data to and from server-side components without requiring the client to reload the view.

Flex have been released since March 2004 and continuously developed many versions until now. The lasted version is Flex 3.0 and plan to release Flex 4.0 in 2009.
Adobe LiveCycle Data Services ES provides a comprehensive set of data-enabling features for using data in RIAs. It enables RIAs to talk to back-end data and business logic in a faster, more efficient operating model. LiveCycle Data Services ES also enables seamless integration with LiveCycle ES business processes and document services.

BlazeDS is a free, open source project providing Flex Remoting and Messaging to all developers. Flex Remoting provides a binary, serialized data transport format called Action Message Format (AMF) to provide a fast, efficient means of transporting data to your RIA, which accelerates application performance. Flex Remoting also makes it fast and easy for developers to connect to back-end business logic and data. Flex Messaging adds real-time data push and publish/subscribe, both powerful capabilities now made easy. Using BlazeDS, you can start using these powerful Java™ server integration features for free, and then subscribe to LiveCycle Data Services, Community Edition for certified builds and support, or upgrade to the full LiveCycle Data Services ES edition for a complete server solution.

By using Adobe Flex, you can enjoy many benefits such as cross-platform, accessible applications, developer productivity, ease of use, open source, standards-based framework, advanced data services, enhancements to existing projects and scalability.

Resource : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flex#Overview

News :
Yahoo! invites developers to fight Google
http://www.ciol.com/Global-News/News-Reports/Yahoo!-intros-Search-BOSS-to-take-on-Google/ 10708107839/0/
Microsoft willing to restart Yahoo talks
http://www.ciol.com/News/News-Reports/Microsoft-willing-to-restart-Yahoo-talks/8708107751/0/
Microsoft sets pricing, fee sharing for services
http://www.ciol.com/News/News-Reports/Microsoft-sets-pricing,-fee-sharing-for-services/9708107786/0/

What is Web 2.0?

2008-09-20T12:03:00.001+07:00

Web 2.0 is about sharing access to content among the people or community, created website enhancement like tools that people who can access the Internet, can use tools on the website to show their profile and interact with another. This technology, the user can customize media and technology for their own purposes, as well as those of their communities.

Web 2.0, free way to Create Custom Web Application, like the web blog, with opening up new possibilities for non profits, allowing people to combine online data from multiple sources to create customized, interactive Web applications.

Original Source:
What is Web 2.0

Related Links:
Web 2.0 'neglecting good design
Are You Ready for Web 2.0?
WEB 2.0 JOURNAL TOP STORIES

Dreamweaver

2008-09-20T12:01:00.000+07:00

What is Dreamweaver?

Dreamweaver is the name of the application that available from Macromedia to provide users with a graphical interface for the creation of web pages. This type of program is commonly referred to as an "HTML editor" because its job is to generate HTML files based on the commands executed in the page layout interface available to the user. The alternative to using a program like this to create web pages is to either use a text editor and enter the HTML codes directly.

http://www.hooverwebdesign.com/dreamweaver.html

WiFi Policies by Hotel
http://www.technologyevangelist.com/2008/07/wifi_policies_by_hot.html

Nectec develops network software
http://www.bangkokpost.com/160708_Database/16Jul2008_data006.php

Three years before 3G reaches critical mass here, says Dtac
http://www.bangkokpost.com/160708_Database/16Jul2008_data00.php

Google Applications

2008-09-20T11:59:00.000+07:00

Google Apps is a web base application that provides services for effective communication and collaboration. The services are very useful and easy to set up, require no maintenance and free of charge. The services are integrated in the Start page where user can preview their inboxes and calendars, access their essential content, and search the web. There are various types of product provided by Google.
For Example:
Gmail - Offer custom email addresses with up to 25 gigabytes of storage for each account
Google Talk - Call or send instant messages to user’s contacts.
Google Calendar - Users can organize their schedules and share events, meetings and entire calendars with others.
Google Docs - Co-workers can create documents, spreadsheets and presentations and share online files.
Google Sites - Work together to keep related do***ents, web content and other information in one place.

Source:
http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/users/user_features.html

Related News:
Google Map Maker: Unleash your inner cartographer
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9976423-7.html?tag=bl
Google's experimental Gmail toys
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7441132.stm
Every Military Base in Google Earth Mash-Up
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/06/every-military.html

RSS and Atom

2008-09-20T11:58:00.000+07:00

RSS is a type of XML (Extensible Markup Language) format. It used for updating the content and show it on that web pages which show only the title. When users click on the link, it will show the description of the content from the original which title of news can updated according to the original. When you want to take the content tot show it will show 3 parts are content provider, web designer and users. The Strong point of RSS is all users don’t need to all web sites to check for updating. All of web sites have different in how often to update. RSS will help users to update those contents without entering those web sites. In the present RSS is well-known in international web sites such as google, Yahoo!, CNet and organization web sites which need to have distribution content, they will provide RSS services. You can see the sign on those web sites.

Atom is similar with RSS. It was created by developers who didn’t appreciate with RSS. Atom format is stable in February 2004 in version 0.3. Difference point between RSS an Atom is Atom is more complex than RSS. It can take more complex information, and it is consistent across the syndication, storage and editing of information.

RSS and Atom is tools that can help all party who surf internet that need to update information or content constantly. Web developers can update those contents without updated their web site frequently which they need to update it every times they need to update new content. RSS and Atom can reduce the copying content in web site focusing on violating copyright. RSS and Atom will link that content automatically to their web sites.

Resource: http://www.whatisrss.com/

News:

E-mail with your peanuts? Airline tests in-flight Web access
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/biztech/06/25/airborneinternet.ap/index.html

Learning Joomla Has Never Been Easier!
http://www.joomla.org/content/view/5136/33/

Professional CSS Gives Developers a Peek into the Process of the Best CSS Designers in the World
http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20080626005337&newsLang=en

Web design

2008-09-20T11:57:00.001+07:00

Web design is a process of conceptualization, planning, modeling, and execution of electronic media content delivery via Internet in the form of technologies which suitable for interpretation and display by a web browser or other web-based. The goal of web design is to create a web site that presents content to the end user in the form of web pages. Such elements as text, forms, and bit-mapped images those can be placed on the page by using HTML, XHTML, or XML tags. Plug-ins is also embedded into web pages by using HTML or XHTML tags because some kind of complex media displaying is needed. (E.g. Flash, QuickTime, Java run-time environment, etc.)
Typically web pages are classified as static or dynamic.

1. Static pages don’t change content and layout with every request unless a manually updates the page.
2. Dynamic pages adapt their content and/or appearance depending on the end-user’s input or interaction or changes in the computing environment The content can be changed on the client side (end-user's computer) by using client-side scripting languages (JavaScript, JScript, Action script, media players and PDF reader plug-ins, etc.) to alter DOM elements (DHTML). Dynamic content is often compiled on the server utilizing server-side scripting languages (PHP, ASP, Perl, Cold fusion, JSP, Python, etc.). Both approaches are usually used in complex applications.
With growing specialization within communication design and information technology fields, there is a strong tendency to draw a clear line between web design specifically for web pages and web development for the overall logistics of all web-based services.

Original Source

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_design

Related News

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7266201.stm
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1668035,00.html?xid=feed-cnn-topics
http://drawlogic.com/2007/06/01/loading-external-css-stylesheets-in-flash9-as3-cs3/

Meta tags are not a Magic Solution!

2008-09-20T11:55:00.000+07:00

When we want our website to get a top ranking in Search Engines, we need to add the "meta tags" to web pages although Meta tags is not a guaranteed way to gain a top ranking on crawler-based search engines.

Meta tags is not Title tag. Meta tags are information inserted into the "head" area of your web pages and is not seen by those viewing your pages in browsers. Meta tags are used to communicate information with the bot of search engines. Two common types of meta tags is Meta Keyword & Meta Description . It place between the "opening" and "closing" HTML HEAG tags.

For Search Engine, the title tag & meta tag are crucial because they use this tag as one of the most important factors of search engine's algorithm. In addition, all major crawlers will use the text of title tag as the title for listing of the website. As the above sentence, meta tags is not a guaranteed way to gain a top raking because it is not every search engine crawl the meta tags. Google is the one of the three Major search engine in the world and Google ignores the meta keyword & meta description tag and instead will automatically generate its own description for web page.

You may have the question about "Still want to use the meta tag?". I can answer that we still need to use the meta tag because another search engine like Yahoo, MSN, and etc are still crawl the meta tag. It is the strategy to get more traffic with diffuse the link to gain better ranking in search engine include Google.

Resource : http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2167931

News:
Google will remove all search queries after 18 to 24 months
http://www.ifergan.org/world-seo-news/google-will-remove-all-search-queries-after-18-to-24- months.html

Next Generation SEO Tactics
http://www.ifergan.org/world-seo-news/next-generation-seo-tactics.html

Joomla & Mambo Adsense module
http://www.ifergan.org/joomla-mambo-adsense-module-2.html

IT Decision Makers Cautious in Adopting Web 2.0

2008-09-20T11:54:00.000+07:00

IT Decision Makers Cautious in Adopting Web 2.0 in the Workplace

More than 40 percent of IT decision makers have rolled out Web 2.0 tools, but most of them are hesitant to adopt web 2.0 because of security and usage concerns. According to CDW’s survey, 31 percent worry that Web 2.0 will be used for personal use over work, 28 percent are concerned about information security, and 27 percent worry about employees wasting time.

Web 2.0 is a modern web technology intended to enhance creativity, information sharing and collaboration among users. These concepts have led to the evolution of web-based communities and hosted services. Nowadays, organizations are recognizing the clear advantages of Web 2.0, even though there have been some hesitation among IT decision makers to adopt Web 2.0. According to CDW, IT decision makers believe that Web 2.0 applications will improve employee performance in the next five years. According to the survey, 67 percent of large businesses have already implemented some form of Web 2.0 applications or tools, 53 percent of medium-sized businesses are currently using Web 2.0 and 27 percent of small businesses and 30 percent of government organizations have adopted Web 2.0. So, we can say that Web 2.0 becomes an asset to all size of organizations by offering increased efficiency and productivity. The Vice President of CDW, Mark Gambill, said the proven benefits of Web 2.0 are likely to outweigh its risks across all types of organizations

Original Source
http://www.centredaily.com/business/technology/story/669042.html

Related News
How Web 2.0 can benefit your business
IBM, SAAS and Web 2.0: Not So Much
Web consultants help unlock promise of Web 2.0

AJAX Technology

2008-09-20T11:53:00.002+07:00

Summary

A programming technique called AJAX, is an acronym for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. This is not a new technology; rather, it is a combination of older technologies that most browsers now support. This technology it’s really fast because webpage will request only small information from the server instead of whole page.
For example, when a customer goes to our apparel design tool, they are taken into what feels like an actual application for designing a shirt. They are prompted to add an image and text and can easily manipulate the text and images to create exactly the product they want.

sources:

AJAX Introduction
http://www.w3schools.com/Ajax/ajax_intro.asp
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

News Ref.

Google improves its AJAX toolkit
http://news.cnet.com/Google-improves-its-AJAX-toolkit/2110-1032_3-6136063.html?tag=topicIndex

AJAX News: stay one step ahead with the very best and latest in AJAX from around the world
http://www.c-point.com/ajax_news.php

CICS and AJAX
http://mainframeweekly.blogspot.com/2006/10/cics-and-ajax.html

Salesforce embedded Google Toolkit Software

2008-09-20T11:53:00.001+07:00

Salesforce.com has strengthened its alliance with Google through the development of a new Google toolkit that will allow its customers to tap into Google services. The two companies signed the initial deal in April allowing for a link between Salesforce's CRM applications with Google Apps.

The companies envision that the toolkit will pave the way for new applications, such as business forecasting and quote generation systems that combine customer data within Salesforce.com with spreadsheet and other functions within Google Apps.

Original Source:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9974895-7.html?tag=nefd.top

Related Links:
Salesforce offers toolkit for Google APIs
Google bundles Salesforce.com CRM with its online apps
Two internet firms team up

Introduction to Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

2008-09-20T11:51:00.000+07:00

What is CSS?
What are cascading style sheets? Let’s suppose for a minute that you wanted all your paragraphs in a multi-page document to be center-aligned. If you omit the attribute and value for the

tag, what do you think the browser will do? It will simply use its default setting, which is left-aligned. So, every time you create a new paragraph, you have to remember to type in the attribute and the value. If you forget, your document won’t look like you want it to be.
Now that would be no big deal if you only had to deal with one or two pages and one or two tags, but what if you are dealing with a website that has 50 pages and hundreds of different tags.
CSS was introduced in late 1996, as an elegant cousin to HTML that promised several things, including:

• more precise control than ever before over layout, fonts, colors, backgrounds, and other typographical effects;
• a way to update the appearance and formatting of an unlimited number of pages by changing just one document;
• compatibility across browsers and platforms; and
• less code, smaller pages, and faster downloads.
CSS represents the Word Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C’s) effort to improve on the tag and attribute based style of formatting. The idea is that style sheets provide a way of customizing a whole page and even whole sites at one time and in much richer detail than the simple use of tags and attributes.
Plus, CSS is sort of like the cornerstone of Dynamic HTML, which is another subject that you should investigate. We aren’t going to get into that subject too much other than to show you how to add DHTML effects to your web using Front Page and possibly importing some already created DHTML applets into your web.
So CSS is a technology that gives you, as a webmaster, much more control over all these things that you would ever have in HTML alone. So let’s dig in to the basics.

Conclusion
It is worth the effort to learn and implement CSS’s because they provide unsurpassed control over the layout of Web pages. They're also the most efficient way to maintain and update a large site, and they make for smaller pages that download faster.
CSS works through individual style sheets rules that consist of selectors and declarations. These rules can be embedded in an HTML document, linked to or from an HTML document, imported to an HTML document, or added inline within an HTML document. Each method of adding CSS to Web pages has its own benefits.

Resource : http://techapps.esc2.net/resources/m_Web_Mastery/Day2/Intro%20to%20CSS.doc

Microsoft surface

2008-09-20T11:50:00.000+07:00

Summary
Microsoft Surface is a the first commercially available surface computer from Microsoft which is developed as a software and hardware combination technology that allows a user, or multiple users, to ma***ulate digital content by the use of natural motions, hand gestures, or physical objects. Surface has been optimized to respond to 52 touches at a time
Surface computing is a new way of working with computers that moves beyond the traditional mouse-and-keyboard experience. It is a natural user interface that allows people to interact with digital content the same way they have interacted with everyday items such as photos, paintbrushes and music their entire life: with their hands, with gestures and by putting real-world objects on the surface.

source
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Surface

Microsoft surface news

Microsoft Surface: consumer version in 2011?
http://bigtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/03/26/microsoft-surface-consumer-version-in-2011/

AT&T First to Introduce Microsoft Surface
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/apr08/04-01SurfaceRetailPR.mspx

Harrah’s Entertainment Launches Microsoft Surface at Rio iBar
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/jun08/06-11HETSurfacePR.mspx

Firefox claims download success

2008-09-20T11:47:00.000+07:00

Mozilla is claiming a download record for the release of Firefox 3.0.

Mozilla was trying to set the new world download record when launching Firefox, version 3.0 on 17 June 2008. However, there was some problem from the start as the servers handling the downloads collapsed while there were many visitors waiting to download the new version. The record attempt start once the servers were up and running. At the busiest the servers were handling more than 9,000 downloads per minute. Within 5 hours the number of downloads for version 3.0 went beyond 1.6 million set by version 2.0 in October 2006. The total downloaded was 8.3 million times over the 24 hour record setting period.

The download logs from the servers must be then verified by the Open Source Labs at Oregon State University where the duplicate and unfinished download are not counted. The process could take a week to finish.

Source http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7462900.stm

Google Map Maker

2008-09-20T11:45:00.000+07:00

Google Map maker is now available for you and your peers to add, edit and moderate most features you see on maps including roads, lakes, parks, points of interest, businesses, cities and localities. For a large area, you can divide it into small area so that you can work with your part and let the others to do their parts and merge them together once finished.

Google Map Maker lets people add details to maps in some countries.

(Credit: Google)

Reference: http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9976423-7.html?tag=bl

Free Google Adwords Vouchers

2008-08-21T12:10:00.000+07:00

If you live in Australia, France, Sweden, Italy, Japan, United States of America or Singapore you can get a FREE Google Adwords voucher in your currency by following the relevant link below:

Google AdWords is a fast, measurable and cost-effective way to advertise. Using Google’s online tools, you simply write a brief description of your product and service, select a few keywords and indicate how much you’re willing to pay per click.

AdWords is a fast, measurable and cost-effective way to advertise. Using Google’s online tools, you simply write a brief description of your product and service, select a few keywords and indicate how much you’re willingto pay per click. Next thing, your ad is live on www.google.com,and you’re seeing results!

Benefits:

Reach people actively seeking information on your products and services.
Target prospects on Google, AOL and other top online destinations.
It’s fast to arrange and simple to implement. Start getting new customers in minutes.
It’s cost-effective. Pay only when people click on your ad.
Maintain total control of your budget. And it’s 100% measurable.

I signed up for AdWords and learn how to use it with the free AUS $50 Google Adwords voucher I received so it was quite useful.

Note: You are not guaranteed to receive a voucher, and if you do get one they are:

Valid only for new Google AdWords customers with self-managed accounts. One promotional credit per customer, and it must be used within 30 days of opening the account.

Note: The above promotional offer may have already expired
Credit : http://www.bhatt.id.au/blog/free-google-adwords-voucher/

Ecommerce - Boost Your Business ROI

2008-07-11T22:28:00.000+07:00

Did you know that over 90% of all online orders are processed by credit cards and that web sites that offer customers the ability to pay with credit cards can achieve up to 300% more sales than those that do not?

It's a fact. Not only do more customers buy, statistics prove that customers actually buy more when given the option to pay with their credit card. Here are some recent trends that will reinforce the need to sell your product or service on the internet- if your business is not yet doing so:

?At the end of 2000, over 400 million people- world-wide- had
Internet access. That number is expected to reach over 1 billion by the end of 2005!

?Almost 100 million people in the U.S. are now making a purchase after using the internet to conduct their research.

?U.S. Consumers spent a record $13.7 billion in online purchases during the 2003 holiday season. A follow-up study conducted jointly by Goldman Sachs, Harris Interactive and Nielsen/Net Ratings pegged sales during the 2004 holiday season at $23.2 billion, up 25% from the previous year. This comes at a time when traditional retail sales are growing in the low single digits.

?Forrester projects that total e-commerce sales in the U.S. will increase by approximately 20% per year, growing to $229 billion in 2008, making online retail transactions 10% of total U.S. retail sales by 2008.

In addition, in a survey conducted among more than 500 small business owners, the overwhelming majority indicated that they were either very satisfied or at least somewhat satisfied with their company's e-commerce return on investment (ROI).

It's no wonder- when compared to traditional forms of direct marketing such as mail order catalogs, the cost of establishing and maintaining an e-commerce website is minimal. Additionally, new affordable, user-friendly storefront applications simplify the task of establishing and maintaining a professional e-commerce website. It is now affordable and doable- even for the novice small business owner- to convert their brick-and-mortar operation into a click-and-mortar operation and triple their revenues in a very short period of time!

What's more, if your company sells products to consumers or businesses and you don't have a fully automated e-commerce website, your business is simply not operating at its full potential and you're sending customers to your competition!

It is no longer a luxury for the small to mid-sized retailer to have an e-commerce enabled site-but a necessity to stay competitive in the marketplace.

10 Second Internet Person, sound familiar?

2008-07-11T22:27:00.000+07:00

Some people do not understand the Internet idea of online commerce, but then again some people do not understand themselves either. To fully understand Internet Commerce you really only need to monitor your "clicking habits" for a few days to see where you are going and what if anything you are buying. The modern Internet Consumer is there and gone, in a click of any eye, if you do not grab us with good stuff, SEE YA, we are out of here and the speed of light. However you can also make money on that fact and Google AdSense is just one way. Before you go hog wild on the Internet concept of making money in a virtual world you need to educate yourself a little; one of the books I recommend is:

"The 10 Second Internet Man@ger, Survive, thrive & drive your company in the information age" By Mark Breier.

Mark is one of the key people behind Amazon.com, an early .com that won. Why because of their team and there relentlessness. Armin A. Brott was a co-author and former Marine, Commodities Trader and MBA. He is also insane, just like the modern day Internet Person. It appears that is what it takes, these guys are as crazy as the Blitz Marketing Team at The Car Wash Guys in the deployment of their market dominating campaigns.

The book dives into instant information, use of inter-office e-mail, dealing with high-strung individuals all kicking butt. It talks of balance, fun on the team and winning. He sights the venture capital game, investment banker crowd and all the people it takes to please the crowd. They go into an in-depth evaluation of customer feedback and sales in the e-commerce world. If every .COM CEO would have read this book fewer would be gone today. The book is about a five hour read but worth it.

It goes into everything from the tricks of the trade, strategies to beat the competition to tactics that are necessary to move mountains. Some of these strategies have changed but the concept behind them remains the same.

I recommend the book to everyone, but feel that some companies are even more dedicated to winning than they were at Amazon.com. I thought that some of the hard work complaints were invalid because that is what it takes and that is life. If you cannot cope get out of the fire, strong survive. I got the feeling that some of these guys at Amazon were yuppy pricks and whimps on the fire line; but their way worked for them, so hats off to their team. We work that hard everyday at my company and you probably do to; they did it using other peoples money, big deal. But no matter what you think they did do it indeed. If it is really that tough on them then do not take the money in the first place. They asked for it and they got it. At least they were willing to pull though on their commitments to the shareholders and drive hard at the market.

All in all this book was good and had some great advice for managing e-mail, electronic communication, when not to have a meeting, when to get a life, when to ask for more, when and how far to push the troops, what to say to the media, investors, VC, and investment bankers. How investment bankers use your information on other projects and why it is important to make deals fast and why loose lips sink ships. I could not agree more with 80% of this book. The other 20% was information only important to a .COM or to Amazon itself. Some of the stories to illustrate points in this book were great and pointed to the real life inside of this fast passed company. Next on the reading list is Amazon.com, the story of the bookseller itself.

I recommend this book to anyone sitting on their butt and wondering what it takes to survive and to win in the age of the Internet. It is fun to win but the stakes are high and only a few can actually do it. So buy it, read it and think on it, thanks, click out to your right on one of the side bar items. SEE YA

eCommerce Software Solutions

2008-07-11T22:25:00.000+07:00

All of the long, grueling nights and an unknown number of working weekends spent converting your dream into reality finally paid off-in a big way! Affiliates are signing up every single day and the clicks have really turned into cash. Your success is not limited to a lonely website but several and all of them are helping you move very diverse product lines. The effort has really paid off and you are milking this Internet cash cow for all its worth but there is one little problem, isn't there? You have reached a point where growing your business even more is almost impossible because instead of developing or acquiring new products like you know you should, you are spending all of your time maintaining and servicing the sites you already have. By the time you get finished signing up and communicating with the affiliates, processing the orders and payment information, and handling the logistics of delivery-the day is gone and you are out of time!

Now don't get me wrong, this is a terrific problem to have but the fact remains that if you are not growing your business then that business is dying! Besides, none of us started these websites just to be bogged down in the trenches, did we? It was the creativity and that rush from seeing the business grow from a single seed of an idea into the multi-domain, multi-product beauty it is now, right?

There is a way to free yourself from the day-to-day operations of your e-business-automation! That is absolutely correct because there are programs out there that can automate your multiple domains, divergent product lines, and multiple affiliate programs! What you desperately need is an Autoresponder Management solution that will automatically handle your affiliate sign-up and the terribly time-consuming task of payment processing and delivery! Such a system would allow you to streamline all of your varied websites and help you to generate the detailed reports you need to better analyze your results in a cost-effective and efficient manner!

In fact, virtually all of the tasks that have prevented you from developing new products and acquiring others can in fact be fully automated in such a way as to leave control where it should be-in your hands-while completely freeing you to expand your initial vision even further! If a program can effectively manage all of the routines currently eating so much of your time in a more efficient manner, why even consider continuing to manage all of these tasks yourself? Isn't working smarter and not harder what got you here in the first place?

Google Adwords Coupon Link

2008-06-16T22:01:00.005+07:00

Follow the following steps to acquire a $50 coupon:

You will need a new Adwords account (as the coupon only applies for accounts no older than 14 days). Sign up for AdWords.

Go to the link below, and register your information according to the account information that you have provided in the step above.
Adwords $50 Credit Link
Adwords £30 coupon (for UK)

Allow up to 7 working days for Google to contact you via email. The email will contain a $50 promo code.

This method has been tested, and it works everytime. If you want more than one coupon, you can follow the steps above, and provide a different/unique email, name, address & credit card for each accounts.

Note that Google may require a deposit (for pre-paid billing), OR that you run advertising campaigns for at least US$5 (for post-pay billing). The exact amount depends on your billing currency.

Hostmonster Reviewed

2008-05-25T09:43:00.000+07:00

Host monster, started all the way back in 1996, currently supports over 175,000 domains with their high quality hosting. That's why they're the next on our list in the top ten webhosting providers.

Another master of the single deal, Host monster offers a high class shared hosting deal for just $5.95 a month. They offer a generous 300GB of storage space and 3 Terrabytes of bandwidth per month, backed up with an unlimited number of POP3 and webmail email accounts. In addition to this they offer 100 MySQL and postgre SQL databases for every customer, with additional support for PHP, Perl, Python and Ruby on Rails. In terms of free software they offer the normal range of forum, chat and blog software, but also a lot of open source software that doesn't come as default with many other packages. Coppermine, Moodle and Joomla are very popular applications, and it's reassuring to see them being promoted to customers.

Two unusual features of the Host monster package are unlimited domain hosting and SSH access. With unlimited domain hosting, any number of domains can be set to point to the single hosting account, meaning that you can host as many sites as you want on a single $5.95 package. SSH, or secure shell, access means that you can remotely access the server from anywhere in the world using a telenet client like PuTTY. This gives you precise control over your account in the exact same manner of an account on a local Linux machine. It might not be useful for everyone, but for expert users it'll almost certainly come in quite handy.

Host monster are currently using cPanel 11 software for their website backend, a popular choice for most webhosts. It gives quick and easy access to most of the utilities you could want for your site, including backups, email and database administration. They offer a demonstration of the cPanel software directly from their site, so you can easily check it over before you have to give them any money.

When it comes to handling customer enquiries, Host monster uses a three-pronged strategy of live telephone support, online chat and an e-mail based ticket system. This should give any potential customers reassurance that any queries are going to be answered quickly and efficiently. This is backed up by the several awards that they've won over the years, including one for the best customer service in 2006.

Essentially, Host monster are offering a good support system and some very interesting technical specs, combining a large offering of webspace and bandwidth with some unusual technical features that are not often seen for a hosting package of this price. Worth consideration when you're looking for a new host.

Save $100 in 5 Minutes Backing Up Your Web Site?

2008-04-24T21:28:00.001+07:00

Here's an easy way to backup your web site's files and
database (worth thousands of dollars, no doubt) that costs
$0 to learn and perform. It only takes seven easy steps.

You don't need to know a lot about how to use Unix or how to
use databases like mySQL. The only real tool you need is a
telnet client. Also, you need to know a few commands which
I'll show you now. (You could even write the commands I'm
about to give you on a cheatsheet.)

STEP 1: CONNECT & GET IN THE RIGHT FOLDER

The web host you're trying to back up needs to allow shell
access (most do these days).

If you have a Windows computer, download a program called
"PuTTY" which you can use to login in your web host's shell.
Search for "putty ssh" on Google or get it here:
http:/ he.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/latest/x86/putty.exe

Open up PuTTY and at the top type in your hostname (your web
site address without the http or www, just "yourname.com").
Your web host either uses SSH or telnet, first try logging
in using SSH and if it won't connect try it using Telnet.
Click the "Open" button at the bottom to connect.

When it connects you will be asked for your account's
username, and after you enter that, it will ask for your
password. If these both take, you'll see a command prompt
of sorts. What you have to do is browse to the document
root, depending on your host it's usually a folder like
"public_html" or "wwwroot".

If the wwwroot or public_html folder has more folders inside
of it, in the form of yourdomain.com, don't browse into them
yet, just stay in the folder you're in.

Browsing in the Unix command prompt is just like DOS, to
view a folder type "dir" or "ls", and to go into a certain
folder type "cd foldername". If you messed up you can type
"cd .." to move up one level.

STEP 2: BACK-UP THE DATABASE

The first step if you're backing up a site is to dump your
mySQL database. To do this obviously you need the mySQL
username and password you want to back up. If your mySQL
username is "myuser" and the mySQL password is "mypassword",
you'd type:

mysqldump -umyuser -pmypassword -A > dump.sql

mysqldump is the program we run to dump the database into a
file, then we type "-u" followed by the username (no spaces)
and "-p" followed by the password (also no spaces). The
uppercase "-A" tells the program we want to dump every
database this user has access to. It MUST be an uppercase
A.

The ">" afterwards says we want to put this program's output
into a file (otherwise it would show up on the screen) and
"dump.sql" is the name of the file we're going to dump to.

This may take a while depending on the size of your
database. Be patient. Once you have a command prompt
again, it's done.

If you don't have root on your server, it may show databases you don't have access to. What you'll have to do here is "force" mysqldump to keep doing the backups even if it gets error messages. The flag for "force" is "-f".

mysqldump -umyuser -pmypassword -Af > dump.sql

STEP 3: BACK-UP YOUR FILES

Now you can put everything into one big file, which you can
easily move over to the new host in one go, instead of one
at a time. Unix doesn't let you create Zip files, but you
can create a TAR (Tape Archive) which just rolls a bunch of
files together without any sort of compression.

To create your TAR archive, type:

tar -cvf dump.tar *

The "-c" tells the program to create a new TAR archive, the
"v" following right after says to be verbose, in other
words, give us the name of every file that's being added to
the archive. "f: means we're saving this to a file, as
opposed to showing it on the screen (you'd just see junk).

"dump.tar" is the name of the file we want to save into, and
the "*" means we want to put everything into this TAR
archive -- files, folders, everything.

You may get some sort of warning about not adding dump.tar
to the archive, that's no big deal because we don't want
this file to add itself.

Your files are backed up. At this point it's time to move
things over to the next host. There's a way we can do this
without you having to download the whole thing, and
re-upload it.

STEP 4: ARRANGE YOUR FILE FOR PICKUP

Remember how I said when you were in "wwwroot" or
"public_html" not to browse into the folder containing a
domain name? Well now it's time to move that dump over into
one of them so it can be picked up.

If one of your folders is, say, yourdomain.com, type:

mv dump.tar yourdomain.com

This moves "dump.tar" into the folder "yourdomain.com".

STEP 5: MOVE THE NEW FILE OVER

Login to your new host. Browse to its "wwwroot" or
"public_html" folder.

Most hosts include a program called "wget" which works sort
of like a browser in that you give it a URL to pick-up that
it loads. Only this browser also saves the file you want to
load.

If your old host was at yourdomain.com, you'd just type:

wget http://www.yourdomain.com/dump.tar

This will load that URL and save it as "dump.tar". You'll
probably see some sort of progress indicator as it goes.

STEP 6: DECOMPRESSING THE FILE

Once you have the file, you use that same TAR program to
decompress it. Type:

tar -xvf test.tar

The "v" and "f" are still there, but instead of "c" (create)
we use "x" (extract). This will unpack each file and let us
know which one it's working on.

STEP 7: RESTORING THE MYSQL DATABASE

Before you can put the mySQL dump back into the database,
you have to go into this new web host's control panel and
create blank databases with the same names as you had
before.

You also have to create a mySQL user and make sure that user
has access to all those databases you've created.

Once that's done find the dump.sql that was unpacked with
all of the other files.

Instead of using the program "mysqldump" to dump the files,
we use the program "mysql" which let's us put commands into
the database. That's basically what a dump is, a file full
of commands that, when run, will recreate the old database
exactly.

This time we don't type in the database name right away. To
get into mySQL from the command prompt, type:

mysql -umyuser -pmypassword

Where "myuser" and "mypassword" are your mySQL username and
password. Once you're in you'll get kind of a weird looking
prompt. All you have to do at this point is type:

source dump.sql

This says, open up the file dump.sql, read through it and do
whatever it says to do in that file. You will see a bunch
of lines telling you a command has been entered (0 Rows
Affected, 1 Rows Affected, something like that).

If everything goes smoothly, type "quit" and you will be
back in the shell.

You've just moved one site (or a bunch of sites) over from
one host to another in about 5 minutes.

About the Author

Article by Robert Plank

Want to pick up more useful PHP and programming skills,
even if you aren't "the programming type"?
Subscribe here -- http://jumpx.com/newsletter

How To Accept Credit Cards Online

2008-04-10T21:30:00.000+07:00

Anyone with an online business, whether for auctions,
services, or virtually any type of product, has asked the
same question at some time during their quest to create
the ultimate online business - "How do I accept credit
cards?"

Since over 90% of all transactions on the Internet
involve customers paying by credit card, accepting
plastic money rates a must for almost any business.

The problem for most small online business owners
involves the high cost of setting up and maintaining a
credit card merchant account.

With startup fees ranging from $200 to $500, minimum
monthly fees of at least $40 to $50, plus per transaction
fees and a percentage of sales, most people who want to
supplement their income online or test an idea can't risk
that kind of money.

Add in credit checks, 48-month service contracts,
expensive equipment purchases or leasing, financial
statements, and last 3 years' tax returns and most people
throw up their hands and give up before they even get
started.

Fortunately several companies responded to this problem
with unique solutions that enable smaller online
merchants to accept credit cards at a fraction of those
high startup costs with no long-term commitment, no
equipment purchases, and zero minimum monthly fees.

~ PayPal.com ~

PayPal has gotten some negative press over the last
couple of years, but that press has been mostly
undeserved.

PayPal makes it easy for you to collect money for your
online sales, send money to merchants, bill people
monthly, collect dues and donations and integrate a free
shopping cart into your site.

Of all the payment and money transfer services online,
PayPal ranks as the absolute lowest in cost and the
easiest to set up.

PayPal allows merchants to sell physical and downloadable
products along with personal services.

~ ClickBank.com ~

For a $50 one-time fee ClickBank enables online ebook,
software and other electronic information sellers to not
only accept credit cards, but provide instant delivery of
their products to online purchasers.

ClickBank allows any merchant to accept virtually every
major credit card on the planet.

The online merchant simply adds a purchase link to their
site, the customer clicks the link, fills in their
payment information and the credit card gets authorized
on the spot.

Once the card gets approved ClickBank redirects the buyer
to a page that enables them to download the ebook,
software, or other product they have just purchased.

ClickBank also operates a fully integrated affiliate
program that automatically pays affiliates who sell your
products for you.

ClickBank heavily restricts what merchants may sell
through the service and does not allow the sale of
physical goods.

~ PaySystems.com ~

Of the three, Paysystems behaves most like a traditional
credit card merchant account.

The service allows the merchant to integrate with a
number of third-party shopping carts as well as use the
PaySystems shopping cart system.

Merchants pay a small transaction fee and a percentage of
the sale, but don't sign up for any long-term service
contracts or equipment leases.

Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the
co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how
to use free articles to quickly drive thousands of
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Credit Card Merchant Account Basics

2008-04-10T21:29:00.000+07:00

Knowing which credit card merchant account to get can be very confusing. There are thousands and thousands of banks, merchant account providers and third party sales teams that can offer you all kinds of incentives. Billions of dollars are transacted online every year and you want your share. Where do you turn? What do you look for? Read on to find out...

Third party payment processors

The easiest way to accept credit cards online is through a third party payment processor. Companies like Paypal and 2Checkout.com allow you to offer your customers the option of paying by credit card while not having to go through rigorous credit checks or putting down big deposits. Both of these companies include the option of putting a short business name alongside their name of your customers' credit card bill.

Out of the two, Paypal has no up front setup fee while 2Checkout asks for a one-time $49 USD setup fee. Paypal is also cheaper per transaction. 2Checkout works differently than Paypal does when processing orders.

2Checkout is considered to have purchased your product or service and is simply reselling it to your customer at a profit to them. They will handle the initial customer concerns with regards to the transaction but will refer the product or service specific questions back to you.

Paypal on the other hand, simply processes the initial transaction in their name once you've upgraded your account to a Premium or Business account. Your customer doesn't have to register for a Paypal account if you live in certain countries like the US and Canada so it is very simple to use.

Invoicing your customer

Paypal allows invoicing but doesn't allow you to send a money request to someone without requiring your customer to open a Paypal account. On top of that, most new Paypal accounts are subject to a send limit restricting the amount of money you send. Now in most markets that Paypal operates in this send limit is up to $1000 but it is still a limit.

Because 2Checkout is purchasing the product or service from you, they don't have an account creation requirement that they impose on your customer. They have an invoicing function and as long as you have shown to 2Checkout that you process reliable transactions through their system, the process is hassle free for your customers.

Which is right for you?

I use both processors. I tend to process initial transactions through Paypal and regular invoicing through 2Checkout. Either way though, you can't go wrong with either option if you choose to have only one credit card merchant account.

Joe Duchesne is the webmaster for TurboMerchant.com a website dedicated to helping people with their credit card merchant account needs. Reprint freely as long as you keep this resource box intact and provide a keyword rich link back to Turbomerchant.com

Building eCommerce Websites That Work - Part 1

2008-04-10T21:26:00.000+07:00

You want to succeed at eCommerce? Welcome to a very big family. Right off, let's be clear - there are lots of ways to do business on the internet. And lots of ways to both make and lose money. Successful eCommerce websites come in all shapes, kinds and colors and while I can't cover every type of site in this series, I will present the basics you need to consider and apply for an eCommerce web site to be successful.

Let's begin by assuming you have some of the fundamentals, that you understand the language and that you are serious. I'm not going to tell you how to set up a web site or get a decent hosting account. We're beyond those basics. The basics here are the factors which will influence the success (or failure) and the degree of success your eCommerce web site experiences.

First and foremost, you need to provide value for your customers. Absurd as it seems to have to repeat that, a lot of so-called eCommerce sites provide no or very little value for their visitors. Pretending to offer value is not the same thing as providing value. Promoting miserably written, hackneyed, cloned ebooks filled with questionably useful and/or outdated content doesn't make a high value web site. Sure you might make some money. Once. And you'll end up with a high refund rate - and an unhappy credit card processor. That path means you're taking advantage of inexperienced customers and abusing their willingness to trust you. This isn't the way to a long-term business with steady repeat customers.

Value on the net is not very different from any kind of off-line retail sales -- a quality product line that will attract potential customers and a competitive price that will lead to purchases. An honest, quality product that will meet the expectations you've created in your buyers. Hyped junk just doesn't cut it.

Next, you've got to have a smooth, user-friendly, easy to follow process all the way to your thank you page. The simpler, cleaner and clearer you can make the process, the better. Where it makes sense you can augment this user-responsive site profile by adding live-response chat.

If you do decide to use call-in or live chat, it's imperative that your operators be well-trained, understand your products and your system and be customer friendly. This can be a problem if you outsource. The less expensive out-source call centers can turn out to be very expensive in terms of lost sales and customers who never come back.

You'll need to check very carefully and be 100 per cent certain the operators actually speak and understand the primary language(s) of your targeted customer group. You'll need to provide extensive background information and highly flexible, well-written scripts.

You should collect your own customer evaluations - separately. Don't rely exclusively on any monitoring or customer satisfaction surveys provided by the call center. Track your ROI to be sure it's money well-spent. Don't stop monitoring just because the results looked good for the first two or three months. Things change. Make sure you're tracking desired actions linked to the call center separately from those NOT related to call-in or live chat. Mixing outcomes leaves you in the dark about what's really happening.

You probably should have an attractive website. An ugly site can work, but to do that you need to absolutely know exactly what you're doing and why it should work. And you'll have to test like crazy to optimize (of course, you should be doing that anyway). The ugly site tactic is not for the inexperienced. Very few individuals really have the grasp of marketing, market and customer psychology that makes for a successful "ugly" site.

To provide a pleasant experience, you need to be careful in what you use - colors, text-size, graphics, animation and white space can add value to your site or turn it into a user nightmare. Test your site with people who will tell you the truth. Just because you love it doesn't mean anyone else will. In general, aiming for a professional appearing site is your best option. Look for the highest ranked, busiest sites in your business area and study the layouts they use. Extract the common features that you see on those sites. While other factors heavily influence traffic and ranking, appearance has a strong effect on visitors and sites that do testing evolve toward optimizing visitor behavior.

Keep in mind that a site's desired actions affect the design and layout. You'll want to study sites where those actions are most similar to the desired actions you target on your web site. If your goal is direct product sales, there's not much point in emulating a site that's optimized for newsletter sign-ups or AdSense.

If your main goal is direct sales (and if it is, then you need backend products too), provide incentives for customers to buy AND to return. The return factor is critical to a long-term strategy for success. Anyone who buys is your best possible future customer. Keep them, track them, make them special offers. Use coupons, discounts, special deals, customer-only offers and back end sales. Your customer base is your gold mine. Since they've shown enough faith in you to buy, do your utmost to never damage that faith. Treat them like the priceless resource they are. Think long-term: successful eCommerce websites are all about value and customer service.

Richard teaches, trains and consults, on and off-line, on business and professional presentations, eCommerce, site building and programming. And writes a lot. Visit http://www.Building-eCommerce-Websites.com for articles, information, resources and links and check our blog at http://www.Building-eCommerce-Websites/blog for opinion and ideas.

Internet Merchant Accounts For Innocents Abroad

2008-03-16T22:32:00.000+07:00

If you want to sell on the internet, your need to accept credit cards. To accept credit cards, you need a merchant account, or access to one. There're two ways of getting this: Get your own merchant account, or 'pimp' off someone else's.

The latter is the option most new merchants choose. You use a third-party to process your payments, and they take percentage. Here are a few popular ones:

PayPal.com (http://www.paypal.com)

I don't recommend them as your main processor. See http://www.paypalsucks.com. PayPal is popular because it was 'firstest with the mostest' on auction sites. For this reason, eBay bought them out. PayPalSucks.com alleges that if you have a bad order they freeze your account, and can even dip into your bank account to make up any shortfalls. Mitigating circumstances are not taken into account. I've read enough complaints about PayPal on webmaster forums to heed them.

The usual rejoinder is; "But I've never had any problems with PayPal". To which is usually retorted "Just wait 'till you get a chargeback!"

A chargeback occurs when someone asks their credit-card company for a refund. They say they didn't get the goods, or they never made the order, or the goods were not as advertised. This is passed on to the processor, who in turn debits the merchant. Or drops him entirely. You don't want too many of these.

I've used them for years for small amounts, with no problem, but on the basis of others' complaints in webmaster forums, I wouldn't use them for large ones. Don't leave large amounts 'on deposit' in any internet-based company; they're not banks, and even banks go bust occasionally.

The best use for PayPal is to entice customers who already use it. Find another provider to be your main one. One like ...

2Checkout.com (http://www.2checkout.com)

This is a factoring service like PayPal. Unlike them, they have a pretty good reputation with webmasters. Like PayPal, they don't provide you with a merchant account; they process your orders through their own.

This is why such sites have to be very stringent; they are answerable to their own merchant account provider. Too many bogus orders, and they go out of business.

This is why third-party factoring services like 2Checkout are very useful to a newbie merchant: fraud prevention. They can screen out suspicious orders.

Most merchants would like to think they can sell worldwide. The fact is most of the world is poor; MOST countries can't afford your goods. So some citizens try to get them fraudulently.

A smart merchant would bar most of the world from accessing his cart, and only accept orders from the USA, Canada, western Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and his home country. Harsh, but you'll sleep better at night.

WorldPay (http://www.worldpay.com)

A well-regarded service. I found adding it to the Oscommerce cart (http://www.oscommerce.com) a bit of a chore, but it worked. More expensive to join than 2Checkout. You don't hear many gripes about WorldPay, which is rare in webmaster circles.

ClickBank.com (http://www.clickbank.com)

Handy if you're selling a few items of inexpensive software to start off your business. They'll let you up the price once they're sure of you. I managed to get them to go up to $150 (whoo!). I was very jealous of their system. It's well designed and extremely 'viral'; they're basically a huge affiliate program. Join ClickBank, and others will try and sell your product for you.

They allow you to block whole continents from trying to buy your product, and that is good. The odds are that a $25 order for an ebook, from a third-world country, is fraudulent.

If an order looks dodgy, it probably is. Contact the customer by 'phone or email. If you don't get a satisfactory reply, refund the card.

When you're making $1000+ a month, get your own merchant account.

MerchantSeek (http://www.merchantseek.com)

A useful collection of affiliate links to merchant account and processing providers. Scroll down their front page to their search tool. You can find an account that suits your needs. This is most helpful to non-U.S. merchants, or those seeking 'international merchant accounts'.

In the UK, look for 'merchant services' at:

Barclays bank (http://www.barclaycardmerchantservices.co.uk)

NatWest (http://www.natwest.com)

Bank Of Scotland (http://www.bankofscotland.co.uk)

Royal Bank Of Scotland (http://www.rbs.co.uk)

Streamline (http://www.streamline.com)

UK processing services are:

Secpay (http://www.secpay.com)

Netbanx (http://www.netinvest.co.uk)

Protx (http://www.protx.com)

Having one's own merchant account means paying less in processing fees.

IMPORTANT: You should specify up-front that you are looking for an internet merchant account. Internet transactions are viewed as higher risk than those by bricks-and-mortar businesses. The technical term is 'card not present'.

Some things you may need, if applying for an internet merchant account of your own:

Business bank account;

Photocopy of a voided cheque for said account;

Copy of the articles of incorporation of your company;

Photocopy of your return policy information;

Trade references;

Photocopy of your driver's license or passport.

In short, you need to prove that both you and your company are what you say they are. Your account provider is taking a chance on you. You might send them a ton of bogus orders. A bank is a business too, not a community service. Help them to make the right decision! The more you can establish that you are bona-fide, the lower the cost of your account.

Things to avoid, if you can:

a) Expensive credit-card processing software rental or hire-purchase.

b) Monthly fees.

c) High discounts (the % of your sales they keep).

d) Fat fees up front (anything over $500 is a joke).

e) Salesmen calling you up with a spiel.

f) Getting lumbered with hiring their shopping cart as well.

Things to look out for at sites offering merchant accounts:

If you need to maintain a U.S. presence - full U.S. incorporation, U.S. server, U.S. offices, U.S. bank account - or NOT.

Also if they want a deposit, and the size of their application fee. And the usual monthly minimums, discounts etc.

Avoid getting into any software purchase or equipment rental. You can sort all that out later, for less money. There are plenty of good payment gateways, like Authorize.net (http://www.authorize.net) just itching for your business.

PS: Don't accept a merchant account from an Eastern European bank. I did, some years ago. The bank went bust. One guy wailed on Usenet that he'd lost $10,000 dollars. Luckily for me, business was bad that year!

About the author: T. O' Donnell http://www.tigertom.com is an ecommerce consultant in London, UK. His latest projects are a mortgage calculator and ebook, available at http://www.tigertom.com/mortgages-uk.shtml

Using Credit Cards Securely Online

2008-03-16T22:31:00.000+07:00

Nowadays, shopping online is a very common thing. Making your purchases without leaving your house is an attractive option for many of us. Purchasing items over the internet using your credit card can be quite an unpleasant experience if you don't make sure your payments are safe. Although many people consider that using a credit card for online transactions is not safe, they continue using this method but with increased caution measures. The greatest risk we expose ourselves to when shopping online is identity theft. But this is not the only risk, and various studies reveal that people have also other concerns like: personal information will be sold to third parties, unauthorized recurring transactions, not receiving the ordered products or even higher prices than advertised prices.

Many people think that shopping online is risky, but the risk is not greater than others. Taking few precaution measures is the best thing to do unless you want to quite shopping online. First of all, we should not shop from unknown websites. Always look for the companies you know or ask someone to recommend you a site or a company that he/she uses. Still, if you're not sure of the vendor's identity try to find his address and phone number and check them. Also check the refund and return policies of the company in case they don't ship you the right products or you're not satisfied with their quality. Another thing to be careful about is the browser that you're using, it has to be a secured browser. A secured browser should include Secure Sockets Layer that scramble the information you are sending over the internet, making the transaction more secure. You can easily recognize a secured web site, because when you're filling in online orders or applications a closed padlock sign should appear at the bottom of the screen. Another way to make sure that the web site is secure is to check the URL; if it begins with "https" it means the transaction is secure because the "s" stands for secure.

Another important thing to be careful about is your privacy. The information you're submitting when you use your credit card online should be kept private by the company that receives it, meaning it should not be passed on or sold to third parties unless you agree. Most web sites ask for your permission to use personal details for direct marketing, and if you feel uncomfortable giving them permission you must know you have the right to object. Anyway, before submitting any personal details you should check the privacy policy of an website; if there are things not clear to you give them a call and see if your understanding is correct or not. Do not submit any information, unless you're absolutely sure that your credit card details are safe.

Being able to safely use credit cards for online purchases is not only the buyer's responsibility. The vendor has also his part of responsibility in ensuring safe purchases for his clients. Vendors also suffer from credit card frauds. They have to take some security measures in order for them and their customers to be protected against online credit card frauds. Security and privacy are two important aspects a vendor should take into consideration. He must ensure the client that the personal information submitted are kept private and at the same time he must check the details received to make sure that he's dealing with the real cardholder.

It is a well known fact that online credit card transactions are risky, because your personal information are exposed and can be stolen by others with the intention of using them to commit frauds. Yet, if the buyers are careful to whom they relies these information and the vendors are cautious from whom they receive credit card information, the risks of online credit card frauds decreases significantly. When disclosing personal information, common sense should exist.

This article has been provided courtesy of Creditor Web. Creditor Web offers great credit card articles available for reprint and other tools to help you search and compare credit card offers.

The Ecommerce Business Plan

2008-02-29T10:16:00.000+07:00

Simply put, business plans can make or break your business. Starting a Drop Ship business online is no different from starting a traditional non-online business. With the strong emphasis individuals place on writing business plans for starting up non-internet-based companies, it is equally crucial to prepare a business plan for your online business.

A business plan serves many important purposes for the online business. First, because the business plan has a detailed list of the tasks to undertake, it is a call to action for you to promote your business actively and not procrastinate on your marketing efforts. Second, it provides a blueprint that describes your company effectively: the market, the products and the steps you need for effective marketing. This serves to guide your business through the months ahead.

Business plans normally comprise of five sections:

1) The Objectives. This section will describe the objectives for the venture, and the mission statement that defines the online business. It states both the financial and strategic objectives and is normally about one page long. There should be a concise description of the Drop Ship business at the start. A brief example:

'Magical Stores Online is an internet company that provides quality tools and resources for magic tricks. We aim to consistently provide magicians with reliable tools for conducting magic tricks, and also accurate information and guides on how to properly perform the magic tricks with our tools. In our first year online, our target is to have U.S. $400,000 in revenues and $100,000 in profits. This can be achieved by attracting an average of about 5000 visitors to our website every month through effective internet marketing. Our strategy is to attract recurring traffic to our website by continually updating the useful resources and information on our website. Magicians will constantly return for more useful tips on magic tricks. This cuts our marketing costs drastically and adds to our profit margin.'

2) The Executive summary. The executive summary should contain a few important details. It should outline the basic model of the company, how the business functions, the market environment, and also the business opportunity in the market. A continuation from the previous example:

'Magical Stores Online is a retailer of magic products on the internet. We specialize in card and coin tricks and stage magic, and classify our products according to age group, skill level, features, and the occasion they are used for. Magicians can browse the product catalogue on our website and buy their products with a shopping cart software. They can choose to pay either by credit cards or by checks. We use a third party credit card merchant to process our payments, hence eliminating the need to have a merchant account ourselves. A profit is realized whenever a sale is made, because we obtain our products at a wholesale price and we sell them at a retail price. Since our supplier, Company XYZ, drop ships the products directly to the customers' address, we do not need to hold any inventory. Our market comprises of magicians of any age group who specialize in card and coin tricks and stage magic. The opportunity lies in the internet as a marketing medium for magic products. Since the rise of the internet in the mid 1990s, we find that the major magic product retailers do not use the internet effectively to market their products. With effective internet marketing skills, we believe that we can reach a wider audience than the other major players, thus claiming a large market share.'

*Note that in a real business plan, the business owner should aim to provide a more detailed version than the examples given above. The examples here only serve to illustrate an overview of what the basic business plan should encompass.

3) Marketing Strategies. In this section, you will describe the steps you intend to take in order to market your business effectively on the internet. There are a few basic marketing methods available on the internet. Mentioned below are three of the most popular methods.

- Email Marketing. Ezines and newsletters are powerful tools. It is simply the most cost-effective form of marketing on the internet. Sending out email promotions or newsletters to your subscriber base costs virtually nothing, except for the time you spend on writing your newsletter. With the web form on your website, you can capture the names and email addresses of the customers who subscribed to your newsletter. I do not recommend that you send your subscribers with product promotions regularly, but you should continually provide them with useful tips and information. In this way, you establish your credibility as an expert and maintain a strong relationship with your customers, instead of appearing as someone just out to make money. Promotions for your products should only be sent out about once or twice a month.

- Search engine optimization. Optimizing your website for high search engine results on google, yahoo and msn, is a powerful way of getting large volumes of traffic at low cost. However, you have to put in a lot of effort for a long period of time, as top rankings do not appear overnight. There are two factors for search engine optimization: On-page or Off-page optimization. On-page optimization involves tweaking the page title, header and meta tags to include the website keywords. It also involves scattering the keywords throughout the page to improve the site relevancy. Off-page optimization, on the other hand, is much more important than on-page. It involves soliciting links from relevant websites. The more the websites that link to your site, and the higher the importance/relevance of the website linking to yours, the higher your website will be ranked on the search engines. Google places a very strong emphasis on this.

- Pay-per-click (PPC) Search Engines. This requires you to pay a sum of money for every visitor that clicks through the search engine to your website. The higher the amount you pay, the higher your website will be ranked on the PPC search engine. The basis for profiting with this marketing tool is by bidding less than the amount that each visitor to your website is worth. Overture is definitely the market leader for pay-per-click search engines.

4) Competitive Analysis. In this section, you have to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors, and the factors that will differentiate your products or services from your competitors. You have to analyze your competitors and record what makes them so successful, and also the weaknesses you can capitalize on to get an edge in the market. For example, competitors may not be using email marketing effectively to promote the products to customers. You can capitalize on this by using newsletters more intensively, establishing your credibility as an industry expert. To differentiate an online Drop Ship business, it is more viable to provide a reliable service from your website. This usually means providing a wealth of tips, articles and information for your visitors. This will attract them to continuously return to your website for the latest tips and resources that will benefit them. Fast response to their email queries and also fast shipping are also good services you can provide.

5) The financial projection section. In this section you can project the profit-loss statements and the cash flow statements for your business. The profit-loss statement records the monthly profit/loss realized over the months, while the cash flow statement records the difference between revenue and expenditure over the months. The costs for an online Drop Ship business will include:

- One-time costs for software like shopping cart software, email marketing software, and also search engine optimization software.

- Recurring costs for the wholesale price of the products, web hosting fees, a proportion of revenue paid to your third party credit card merchant to process your payments, and also internet marketing costs.

This section will be useful for you to gauge how your Drop Ship business performs according to your expectations.

In conclusion, business plans do not only apply to real-world businesses, but are equally critical to online businesses as well. They serve as blueprints of the companies and also as strong calls to action for the aspiring internet entrepreneurs to achieve their success in ecommerce.

About the Author: Ray Yee is the founder and president of Dropshipperscentral, a website which provides a wealth of informative articles, tips and resources on everything you'll ever need to know about setting up a Drop Ship Business and marketing it. Click here for the Wholesale Drop Ship Directory from http://www.dropshipperscentral.com

Creating The Perfect Ecommerce Website

2008-02-29T10:13:00.001+07:00

If you're thinking of jumping on the bandwagon and going into business with your own ecommerce website, you'd do well to look at a few examples before you start. Finding out what a good ecommerce website looks like will help you know what to include - and what to avoid - when you start to set up one of your own. Here are some of the things you'll find on the perfect ecommerce web site:

A good ecommerce web site sells something that people want to buy.

This is probably the most important fact of all. It's all very well to decide that you want to set up an ecommerce web site (after all, a lot of people are doing it, and doing it very successfully, too), but first of all, make sure you know what you're going to sell - and whether or not it's something people will want to buy. That means doing market research, and market research can be time consuming and boring, but you'll never create a successful ecommerce website without it.

The most successful online stores sell products that are high in demand and which fulfill a need.

Before you even think about starting an ecommerce website of your own, you'll need to work out which group of consumers you'll be targeting, and just what kind of thing they want to buy.

A good ecommerce website has a simple yet eye-catching design.

Never underestimate the importance of finding a great design for your ecommerce web site - but don't over-estimate it either. While your ecommerce web site design is one of the things your customers will remember you for, if you get things right, they'll be far more interested in what you're selling than in how you're selling it. Make sure your ecommerce web site is easy to use and navigate, and that your products are displayed to their best advantage.

A good ecommerce website makes it easy for customers to pay.

Have you ever found something you want to buy on an ecommerce website, and got to check out only to find that you need to make a phone call to the company in question to complete your transaction or, worse, print out an order form and send it through the mail? Frustrating, isn't it? Your customers will think so too. Install an easy to use, straightforward payments mechanism which allows your customers to pay safely and securely using their credit or debit cards - they'll thank you for it by coming back for more!

The perfect ecommerce website is easy to find.

Last but not least, make sure your ecommerce web site shows up on search engine listings. If it doesn't, no one will ever find it, and you may as well not have started it at all. Search engine optimisation (the art of getting your web site listed on search engines) can be tricky and time consuming, so if you're not sure how to do it, find someone who can - it'll be worth every penny you spend on it!

Amber McNaught is co-owner of Hot Igloo Productions Ltd, a website design and online marketing firm offering high quality designs at affordable prices.

Why Arent People Buying From Your Ecommerce Website?

2008-01-31T20:39:00.000+07:00

Your stock is tempting, your prices right - your ecommerce website is good to go, but somehow the customers just aren't buying. So where are you going wrong?

Make sure people can find your ecommerce website.

What are you doing to bring customers to your ecommerce web site? It's not enough to just design a website and then sit back and wait for the money to come rolling in as eager customers flock to your store. In fact, unless you go out of your way to show them, your prospective customers may not even know your business exists at all.

First of all, make sure your ecommerce website is optimised for the web. You should be using good key words throughout the site, and in your meta tags (if you don't know what meta tags are, your designer should!) You should also be building as many links to your ecommerce web site as possible, as the more opportunities people have to click on a link to your site, the greater the likelihood of your website cropping up in the search engines - and attracting visitors.

You should also think about online advertising for your ecommerce website. Pay per click advertising, for example, allows you to set a daily budget and pay for your site to appear in search engine listings. It could be a good idea if you're serious about bringing in visitors.

What if you're getting the visitors to your ecommerce website, but not getting the sales?

If there are plenty of people coming to your ecommerce website, but none of them are buying anything, you know that the problem lies either with the site itself, or with your stock.

First of all, think about your stock. Is it well presented on the site, with clear pictures and good item descriptions? Is it fairly priced? Take a look at some of your main competitor's websites, and see how much they're charging. With so much choice on offer, no one will buy from you if they can get the same thing cheaper elsewhere - and remember that the internet makes it easy to shop around. If your prices are the same, or even lower, than the competition, however, you may have to look elsewhere to find out what the problem could be.

Is your ecommerce website itself putting off buyers?

One of the main reasons people give for not shopping on the internet is fears about security. Your ecommerce web site should have a clearly stated privacy policy, and returns policy. People who are giving you their money before they receive their goods are making a leap of trust; they have to trust you to take only the amount you've said you're going to take from their credit card, and they have to trust you to actually send the goods they're buying from you. Because they can't actually see the goods in the flesh (as it were) before they buy them, they'll also often look for reassurance that if they aren't satisfied, they'll be able to get their money back. You should make sure that they can find reassurance on all of these points just by looking at your ecommerce web site.

Amber McNaught is co-owner of Hot Igloo Productions Ltd, a website design and online marketing firm offering high quality designs at affordable prices. Visit their website at http://www.hotigloo.co.uk

Select a Niche Market for Ecommerce

2008-01-31T18:50:00.000+07:00

Choosing a carefully pinpointed niche market should be one of the first steps that an internet business owner has to take. A very common way of describing a niche market is 'a targeted group of individuals with very specific and similar needs or interests.' These people engage in similar activities and hence they would most probably demand the same goods or services to cater to their needs. Online businesses that drop ship their products to their customers would thrive by focusing on a specifically targeted niche market. In this article, I would focus on the advantages a niche market can bring to an online Drop Ship business. This article also provides you with practical steps for you to select your niche market.

By focusing on a specific niche market, Drop Ship businesses gain an edge because they are like 'monopolies' for that particular niche. The 'monopoly' for that niche would be able to provide a much wider range of products and better services for that market, enabling it to dominate. Because there is a very large number of niche markets on the internet, most Drop Ship businesses are able to survive and thrive online by selecting a niche that no major competitor is targeting, and directing their marketing efforts to their respective niches. With limited resources, a small Drop Ship business just starting out cannot hope to sell 'mainstream' products that are also supplied by huge competitors like Wal-Mart.

It is critical to first establish a market with an unfulfilled need and then develop products or services to meet these needs. Most online ventures fail by first selecting a good product, and then looking for the market for that particular product. They fail when the product's demand is insufficient, or when the product already has a strong competitor supplying to the market.

The internet is not the only medium where niche marketing dominates. In our corporate world, the majority of the successful companies also selects a niche market and develops products or services that cater to their specific niche. Microsoft develops software as operating systems and platforms for computers. Nike offers shoes and footwear targeted at the sporting population. This illustrates the importance of first selecting a niche market for your business to focus on.

There are a few simple stages in the selection of a niche market:

1) Brainstorm for niche markets that are related to your area of interest or expertise. It is simply easier to succeed if you focus on an area that you are passionate about and have the most expertise in. This way, along the learning curve of starting an online business, the frustrations that you face along the way will be reduced because whatever you are doing feels more like fun instead of work.

2) Research the market in detail. This involves producing a detailed profile of your market, including the estimated demand for your products, the products in the niche likely to have the highest demand, and where these prospects normally congregate online.

You can use the free Overture search term suggestion tool to gauge the market size for the products you have in mind. It is available at http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/. Simply type in the product keywords and this tool can suggest more specific keywords, and also the number of times this word has been searched over a period of time.

Chat rooms, forums and newsgroups are where your target market normally congregates online. By monitoring these discussion boards, you should be able to determine the evolving needs of your target market, and what new product is likely to be in high demand soon. Forums can also be a good source of ideas for your products. Google Groups is a good place for you to start finding newsgroups or forums for your niche market. It is available at http://groups.google.com.

3) Select a niche market that has a need not currently being adequately met instead of targeting a niche whose need a competitor can fulfill very well. From the newsgroups, discussion boards and forums, you can get valuable information about business opportunities. For example, if consumers voice out their dissatisfaction about any unfulfilled need, you can quickly find and offer any product as a new solution to their problem. This fills a 'gap' in the market and your business is established.

4) For the niche markets that do not have their needs adequately met, conduct research on the major businesses in that field. If there are no major competitors, you can congratulate yourself on finding a suitable niche market for your Drop Ship business. If there are several major market players, you have to either develop a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) to differentiate your products from your competitors, or you can narrow down the definition of your niche market to a more specific level. For example, if your niche market is the group of individuals passionate about oil paintings, you can narrow down your focus to abstract oil paintings by Rembrandt or Renoir.

If you want to be a retailer of Rembrandt oil paintings, for example, note that your competitors are not the websites selling oil paintings from all artists, but the websites that focus only on Rembrandt oil paintings. All things being equal, an online shopper will certainly choose a website focusing only on Rembrandt oil paintings, instead of a website selling paintings from all the famous artists. This is the edge that a niche market can give to a small Drop Ship business.

You can use the free Overture 'View Bids Tool' available at http://uv.bidtool.overture.com/d/search/tools/bidtool/ to gauge the competition for your products. Overture is a Pay-Per-Click search engine, which provides search results ranked in order of how much businesses are paying for every click-through to the business websites. This tool lists the amount that each business is paying for every click by visitors. The higher the bid for the keyword, the more popular the keyword, thus the stronger the competition you face for your products.

5) Test your market. Once you have confirmed your niche market, you must test your products for that market. Start off your business by selecting a few of the most popular products and placing them in your catalogue. Next, you announce your products to newsgroups and discussion boards and gauge their response to your products. Observe how well the individuals are reacting to the introduction of your products. If you did your research properly and fulfilled a need well, most probably you would receive a very warm response from forums and newsgroups.

Finally, as the online retailer for your niche market, you should aim to be the best online resource for the market. Articles, strategies and guides should be included on your website to provide your niche market with valuable information. For example, you can write your own guides on how to properly use tools for magician tricks if that is what you are selling. However, it is not advisable to start off by selling an enormous catalogue of products. You should first establish your credibility by supplying your market with useful know-how for the products, and recommending them a few popular products. As your business stabilizes, you can slowly expand your business catalogue to include other products.

Selecting a niche market is one of the most important steps for setting up a Drop Ship business. It lays the foundation for how your business will develop in future. Thus, spend some time carefully deciding on your niche market before taking the plunge into your business.

You are welcome to reprint this article as long as you include the Author's resource box with the article.

Online Credit Card Processing - How to Accept Credit Cards - Ecommerce 101

2008-01-18T10:55:00.000+07:00

Back in 1998 (through 2000 or so), I worked for a small company (called PaymentNet / then Signio) that handled online transactions. Verisign later purchased this company, and the product team I led integrated the "client" - the portion that took the credit card information and sent it to our servers for processing. The product name is Payflow Pro - maybe you've heard of it?

I'm going to limit this discussion to Visa / MasterCard credit cards -- Amex and others operate slightly differently.

First, there is the bank that the consumer's credit card is attached to. That bank is called the "acquiring institution" ... it handles the "credit" you have on your credit card.

Then, there is the merchant bank. That's where the business opens up a "merchant account" to be able to accept various forms of credit cards.

The merchant account is connected to another company called a "processor". This "hidden" layer is the company that actually moves the funds from the acquiring institution to the merchant account (that process is called "settlement"). The processor also handles talking to the acquiring institution to make sure that the customer has the funds available (a process known as authorization).

Some well-known credit card processors are First Data Merchant Services (FDMS), Nova and PaymentTech.

Sitting on top of the processor is one of two primary systems either a swipe-card terminal (like those you see in Wal-Mart) or a "gateway" company that does basically the same thing, but over the Internet - that's what Verisign Payment Services and Authorize.Net do.

Note that the waters are even muddier in many cases, for example, Wells Fargo can act as every piece of the puzzle in some circumstances.

So, what actually happens when you purchase something at Wal-Mart using a credit card?

a) You place your items from your "basket" onto the counter and scan them. the checkout system provides a total.

b) You swipe your card through a "terminal", which reads the # off the magnetic stripe.

c) Wal-Mart dials their processor, and asks if you have the funds available on your credit card. The processor talks to your bank (the acquiring institution). If funds are available on the card, they are marked as "held" in your account (an authorization) - if not, the transaction is declined (yuk). Authorizations that are never settled tie up your credit card funds for a period of time, usually 10 days or so.

d) At the end of the day, Wal-Mart marks all the transactions they want to receive funds for, and submits them to their processor in a "batch". The processor then contacts the acquiring institutions and transfers the funds to your merchant bank - which may make the funds available instantly (in a day or two), or may hold them for a while, or may hold the funds in a "rolling reserve" (keeping some funds held back in case a consumer fights the transaction, called a chargeback).

In the online world, replace the cash-register with an online shopping cart, and the electronic credit-card with terminal with called a "gateway" such as Payflow or Authorize.Net. the process is basically the same, with slightly more complexity.

Be careful going "a-la-carte" with ecommerce credit-card services: if the gateway you chose can't talk to the processor your bank uses, or your software can't talk to the gateway, you're hosed. That situation was MUCH more common (things not working together) back in the mid/late 90's than it is today. However, most "brick and mortar" banks (like your local branch) still don't have a clue about online credit-card processing ? if they attempt to sell you a "leased terminal", it's best to run the other way and find a solution from reputable online source.

As an online merchant looking to accept credit cards, all you really need to know is that all services purchased through a single solution will usually work together seemlessly.

Nick Temple is a former engineer for what is now Verisign Payment Services. He can be reached at his website, http://www.nicktemple.com. He is part-owner of the CommerceStore.com; complete online credit card ecommerce solution.

Using Drop Shipping for E-commerce

2008-01-18T10:52:00.000+07:00

Thanks to the ubiquity of the internet, online virtual businesses have become very popular business opportunities. Online retail stores are gradually playing a more important role in our lives than the traditional 'brick-and-mortar' retail shops. Over the last few years, a new concept called 'Drop Shipping' has emerged with the coming of the internet. Drop Shippers are basically wholesalers who are willing to ship their products directly to your customers. This article aims to provide readers with an introduction to the current state of the E-commerce industry, Drop Shipping and its benefits, and the promise it holds for the online retail community.

Online Drop Ship businesses are now very popular home-based business opportunities. According to a Forrester Inc. report, online retail sales will grow at a 25% annual growth rate over the next five years. Online retail sales will reach nearly $230 billion and account for 10% of total US retail sales by 2008. On Ebay, more than 430,000 people are making a full- or part-time living from the auction site. Many of them use Drop Shippers to auction their products. Hence, with such strong statistics, the internet entrepreneur can hope to start a retail business now and still claim a portion of the ever-growing market share.

The Drop Ship model offers many unique advantages over the Wholesale model:

1) You do not have to spend a fortune on the huge inventory of wholesale stocks before you start a retail business. This translates into a very low business startup cost. There is no risk of purchasing large quantities of stock, and finding that you cannot sell off your goods because they have become obsolete among consumers. Therefore, with the variety of products offered by your Drop Shipper, it becomes feasible to test which products have a strong demand over the internet without losing a fortune on each test.

2) Another prime advantage of a Drop Ship business is that there is no need to worry about shipping your products to your customers. You do not have to provide storage space for your goods, nor do you have to incur warehouse costs. Your Drop Shipper will take care of all the logistics and shipping of your Drop Ship business. In fact, most Drop Shippers are willing to label their products with your company name on it, so it will appear as if you are the one who shipped the products to your customers. The shipping cost for each product is also reduced, because your Drop Shipper can ship your products directly to your customers. A higher profit margin is achieved because of the reduction in unnecessary shipping costs.

3) Drop Shipping is also unique in that it allows you to 'sell high, then buy low', instead of 'buy low, then sell high'. Your risk involved in your retail business is dramatically lowered as you get paid up front for your products, making a profit on each sale.

4) There is no minimum quantity restriction on your orders. From your website catalog, you can sell as much of your products as you want, and you can leave the indenting of stocks to your Drop Shipper. The quantity of products which you can sell over your website is only limited to your market demand, and your marketing efforts.

The process of setting up a Drop Ship business can be distilled into a few simple steps. First, you do some research over the internet over the niche market that you would like to target. Once, a strong demand for your products has been established, you contact the Drop Shipper of your choice and set up your business as the retailer of the products you want to sell. Next, you design a website complete with product catalogue and credit-card-accepting functions. The product descriptions and images can be obtained from the Drop Shipper, in most cases. After which, you need to drive large volumes of traffic to your website through internet marketing. Some visitors to your website will be converted to customers if they find your offers attractive enough. They place orders at your website and they pay you the retail prices, up front. You email the orders to your Drop Shipper, who will ship the products to your customers directly. Of course, the retail price will have to be marked up to include shipping costs as well. Since the Drop Shipper charges you the wholesale price for their products, the profit margin you earn is simply the difference between the retail and wholesale price.

Internet businesses, in general, have also many strong advantages over 'brick-and-mortar' businesses. Startup costs are generally very low, and this is well suited for those aspiring entrepreneurs working on a shoestring budget. The costs for conducting a Drop Ship business will be mainly software for setting up and marketing your business. Some examples will include shopping cart software, email marketing software, search engine promotion software, and so on. Other costs would include the web-hosting fee and also the wholesale costs of the products. In most cases, the Drop Shipper will require you to pay them a small deposit to signify your commitment and to prevent fraud.

With the low startup costs for a virtual business, you can keep trying different forms of business or different marketing methods over the internet without losing a fortune on your efforts. You can 'lose little' over many unsuccessful endeavors, but 'win big' on the few business models which you get right.

Perhaps the most attractive aspect of an online business is the ability to automate it and let it generate income on its own. This is largely possible due to software to automate the business process, like shopping cart software and email autoresponder software. Thus, Drop Ship businesses can run 24/7 without you being present physically to run it. Imagine having the freedom to do whatever you want without being an 'employee' for your business! All you need to do is to get the basics of the business up and running, like the website design and product catalog. After which, you consistently market your website over the internet to get a recurring volume of traffic to your website. This will bring you recurring sales and allow you to make a decent living over the internet. You can repeat this process again and again with other markets of your choice. In the long run, this will bring you multiple streams of income. Online Drop Ship businesses are thus strong examples of assets that generate passive income.

In conclusion, the e-commerce industry is still very promising despite the dot-com bust a few years back. With the introduction of Drop Shipping, the hassles of conducting a retail business over the internet have been dramatically reduced. As the industry is still relatively young, entrepreneurs should get in the e-commerce game early to establish themselves as strong market players of the future.

5 Tips for Online Shopping

2008-01-18T10:48:00.000+07:00

Shopping online has become more and more popular in America as we are all looking to save a little time and money. E-commerce sales are growing at astronomical numbers ranging from 20-25% per year. And according to Forrester Research, 40% of households are using coupons in their web shopping. The huge increases are obvious: the online savings and discounts are impossible to match by traditional stores constrained by the overhead costs of employees, rent, and insurance. By using some of the tips and tricks mentioned below, you'll be able to take further advantage of a new American pastime: saving with online shopping!

Tip #1: Don't buy Ebay. We all know online auctions seem like such a great deal, and it's easy to get caught up in the emotion of auction. Thing is, auction sites like Ebay and Ubid have become saturated with buyers AND sellers, so virtually any discount found is quickly sought by re-distributors who then add their own markups to your purchase. The online marketplace has enough people out there that you can end up spending hundreds of extra dollars for the same things found in your local mall! Don't let your emotions get involved - these are not the right places for the aware shopper.

Tip #2: Never pay retail. Take this scenario: You find something you want to buy, maybe the latest craze or fad such as the Ipod. Should you really pay the price that Apple is offering? No! You can find many deals and coupons for the same purchase just by typing, for example, "ipod coupons" into Google. Spend a little time searching through the top ten to twenty results, you're sure to find the same product for a significant discount. Sometimes, by filling out a survey or signing up for an email list, you'll get additional savings and many times you can even get your product for free!

Tip #3: Get over your instant gratification desire. Just admit it, buying something always gives you a good feeling and you can't wait to take pleasure in that new purchase. Anything you're buying at the mall for that same good feeling can usually be found for a huge discount online. You just have to be willing to wait for the short 2-5 days that it takes for shipping. It's definitely worth the savings to able to control your emotions and hold off until it arrives via UPS!

Tip #4: Watch out for excessive shipping charges. Many times retailers slash their costs to get the sale but then charge more for shipping. Make sure to check the final cost to ensure you didn't receive any unwarranted charges. You should also find a free shipping deal at any of the online coupon sites. Sometimes the shipping can cost more than your purchase!

Tip #5: Online coupons: Were you aware of online coupon websites that have discount and promotion codes to nearly all internet stores? These types of websites always have up to date discount offers arranged by category or store, so you can always find something on sale. It's not only a way to get a good deal but you can also find some of the free shipping offers listed in tip #4. Just be careful to check for a coupon code before making any internet purchase. It's a simple way to find extra savings.

Melanie Breeze

Alternative E-Commerce Solutions

2008-01-15T10:04:00.000+07:00

Over the past several years, the Internet has emerged as a breakthrough technology that has and will continue to transform the way we live and communicate, and especially the way we do business.

No matter if you are selling a product or a service, the Internet is a means of reaching markets that had otherwise been unreachable in the past. And, it also provides ease of purchasing and selling almost anything online?also known as E-Commerce.

But, for many businesses, especially start up and small to mid size businesses, having a website that includes the usual E-commerce capabilities is just not in their budgets. Setting up merchant accounts and secure servers can get quite costly.

So, if you are really wanting or needing to have e-commerce capabilities on your website to sell your products, but your budget just won't allow it, there are a variety of alternatives to the expensive online route that you can consider.

Your first choice allows you to accept credit card payments but without a secure server. Some financial institutions, which offer credit cards, also offer Traditional Merchant Accounts. This allows you to manually verify credit card information from those that want to purchase from you. But, you should be aware, if you ask for credit card information from your website without the guarantee of a secure server, you may run into hesitation from potential customers.

Another alternative to the expensive merchant account is to accept cheque payments online. For this you will need to acquire software or a program that will allow you to print MicroPrint (the small numbers and characters at the bottom of a cheque? ie. routing #, account #, etc.). There are several cheque writing programs available, including those found at Checker.net and Checkman.com.

The procedures involved to use this payment method are to first set up a form on your website. You then send an invoice to your customer with direction to the cheque-form page, which they must fill out and submit, via your cgi program. You then verify the funds and information and then the software prints the cheque on special cheque paper, which you can purchase at most business supply stores.

You can also have the above type service online, via such sites as Paybycheck.com.

Another alternative, which is rapidly becoming the choice of many online product and service providers, is Online Payment Systems. There are several of these systems available but I have only found one that has features available to Canadians. Called PayPal.com, this service allows you to set up an account with them and they verify the credit information of those buying from you. Now, many features that this system has to offer are still limited for Canadian retailers but you are still able to set up an account, bill your clients, and receive payments into your Canadian bank account or credit card account with only minor service charges being applied.

Taking advantage of the expansive market of the World Wide Web does not mean that you have to go bankrupt. You can still get on the E-Commerce bandwagon and accept payments with the above listed services and other alternative payment systems that may be available. Actually, most of these services are all that the average small business, especially those in the service industry, really need. And they don't cost a fortune.

About The Author

Janice Byer is a certified Master Virtual Assistant and owner of Docu-Type Administrative & Web Design Services (http://www.docutype.net). See this and other articles on her website.

jbyer@docutype.net

Online Customer Service - The Cornerstone of a Successful Online Business

2008-01-15T10:02:00.000+07:00

Online customer service is still one of the most frequently overlooked aspects of running a successful online business. Yet, in the highly competitive world of Internet business, it could be (and should be) the one thing that sets you apart from your competition!

Most Internet businesses that have a drive to succeed focus all of their time and resources on building a great site, and then trying to drive tons of traffic to that site. Honestly, these are two incredibly important factors for success. After all, a site won't be successful without tons of new potential customers hitting it, and you want that site to convey a professional image of your business by its appearance and ease-of-use. However, you must keep in mind that you are operating in a highly-competitive environment. You probably already know that there are tens, if not hundreds, of other businesses that offer the same basic goods and/or services that you do! They are battling you for the same exact keywords, and constantly enhancing their site to make their visitors' experience better than yours.

So, how are you going to differentiate yourself from your competition? What is going to set you apart? What is going to help you get, and keep, more customers? The answer lies in the online customer service that you provide! Before I get into how to provide excellent online customer service, let me explain why providing online customer service is so important.

On the Internet, customer loyalty is incredibly difficult to obtain unless your site is associated with a popular retail store (e.g. Walmart.com, BestBuy.com), or has developed a successful reputation and goodwill over a long period of time (e.g. Amazon.com). The fact is, Internet customers are much more likely to shop around from site-to-site because it is so EASY. In the brick-and-mortar world, shopping around for an item means getting in the car and driving from store to store, not to mention, parking at each location, and then going in to find the item. That sounds like an entire afternoon project, just to purchase one item! That is why most people don't do that, especially for a low cost item. They develop loyalty to one store for a variety of reasons that matter to them, and they buy the item almost exclusively from that store. Think about your personal life. Don't you usually buy groceries from the same store week after week because it is easier than going somewhere else and having to learn where all your favorite items are located?

The Internet works very different. I can wake up in the morning, and before I finish breakfast I can browse the top ten sites listed on Google for the item I'm looking for. Its so easy to shop around! I don't know anything about any of those sites so how do I decide which to buy from? Sure, I'm looking for the best price, and I also want a site that looks credible so I don't perceive that I may get ripped off. That may narrow my list from ten to five sites. They all offer my item at about the same price, they all have professional looking sites with easy-to-use shopping carts, and I found them all in the top ten search results on Google! By common Internet business logic they're all doing it RIGHT! But, only one will get my business today. And who's to say that even if I have the best experience possible with the one I choose, that I'd ever buy from them again. Remember, it's so easy to shop around, and there are still several other good-looking companies that offer similar items.

The difference is in the customer service. That is the one way that a website can set itself apart in this competitive world. It can take the best website, full of stylish graphics and rich content, and make it more than an image on a computer monitor. It can give it a personal touch. Its that personal touch that will differentiate yourself from your competition. Potential customers will want to buy from you, and customers will want to keep coming back. They know you... and you know them. Your business has become more than just an image on a screen to them.

So, how do you provide great online customer service?

Traditional wisdom says to include your telephone number and email address on your site in highly visible locations. Unfortunately, doing just that doesn't go far enough, and probably will only offer minimal benefits. To call you, a dial-up user may actually have to log off your site just to get in touch with you, and you're trying to keep them on your site! Even with a high-speed connection, a phone call may not be the most convenient thing to do, especially if you don't have a toll-free number. And if you do, phone calls are costing you a lot of money! With email, your customers can contact you, but how long will they have to wait for a response--an hour, several hours, a day, a week? You may have a great policy about quick follow-up, but do your customers know that? They just sent you an email and they don't know when they'll hear back... if ever. Plus, posting your email on your site opens you up to getting tons of spam.

So, what's better than telephone and email? Here are three tools that can increase your sales, build your customer loyalty and retention, and save you money.

1. LIVE CHAT: Putting a live chat system on your website will have incredible benefits. Picture a potential customer browsing your site and having a question about placing an order. Again, we've discussed that phone and email aren't the best solution for this scenario. Now, picture having a large, noticable live chat button right there on your site. The visitor clicks it, enters their name and question, and they are IMMEDIATELY connected to you or one of your employees. Now, you know who they are, and they know who you are--you're beginning to develop that personal relationship we talked about. You can help them with their order, answer any questions they might have, or upsell them to a different product. All this, and they never left your website. Next time they need something, there's a good chance they'll want to come back to your site and talk to you again.

2. KNOWLEDGE DATABASE: A knowledge database is a collection of self-help articles that a customer can search through to find answers to their questions. Let's face it, as easy as you make your website to navigate and use, you'll still have people that have questions, problems, or concerns. With a knowledge database, the customers can quickly and easily browse for answers to their questions, and get help quickly and effectively. Its like FAQs, only turned up a notch.

3. TICKET SYSTEM: Using a ticket system is the best way to support current customers, and to answer questions from potential customers. A customer or potential customer creates a ticket and submits it to your company. Your company receives the ticket and can route it to the appropriate person or department for follow-up. It is quick and easy, and the customer gets an answer from the most qualified source at your company for the problem they had. Tickets also allow you to track your customers to get to know them better, and track your issues to find out what you could be doing better. Tickets are far more organized, secure, and useful than email--both for the company and the customer.

Search engine optimization and site design are important. But you're operating in a highly competitive environment, and you need something more to set your business apart. Something to make your website more than just a simple collection of graphics and content on a screen. You need a personal relationship with people viewing your site. The kind of relationship that will create new sales, and encourage repeat purchases. This can be acheived through effective online customer service.

Source : http://www.CSLive.com

How to Boost Conversion Rates, While Lowering Merchant Account Fees!

2008-01-15T10:00:00.000+07:00

Using an Address Verification System (AVS) when processing your online credit card transactions can help to reduce the number of fraudulent transactions you receive. However, most online merchants don't know that using AVS can also reduce your number of legitimate orders.

Using AVS can hurt your conversion rates in two main ways.

1. If you set your AVS rules to reject all transactions that do not match both street address and zip code, you may be loosing legitimate sales from customers who do not understand that the billing address needs to match the address that their credit card statement is mailed to.

2. The more troublesome problem with AVS occurs when your customer has recently moved. Even if you update your billing address with your credit card company after you move, it can take up to 6 months or longer for them to update the AVS database with your new information (even though they make sure that the bill arrives at the right address!)

The worst part about this delay is that often customers will blame the merchant if their card gets rejected for this reason. If their credit card bill arrives at the right address, they assume that their credit card company updated their information. When a card that they know should work gets rejected by your website, they often become angry with you, not their card provider!

This happened to me recently. I moved my family into a larger home over eight months ago and the debit card that I use for most of my online purchases still gets rejected unless I use my old billing address, even though the bank statement has come to our new address from day one!

The solution to the first problem is quite easy. Simply make sure that you use a statement near your "Billing Address" fields telling your customers something along the lines of, "To speed processing of your order, please ensure your billing address matches the address on your credit card statement."

Include this type of statement near your "Billing Address" fields and your AVS matches will improve.

In markets with historically low attempted fraud rates, you can also try loosening your AVS rules a bit. Most AVS systems check both the number in the street address and the zip code. By setting your AVS rules to accept transactions that match for only one of the two AVS numbers, but still rejecting transactions that do not match for both, you can improve the number of successful transactions. If you attempted fraud rate is very low you can even try accepting transactions that fail both AVS checks, but flag the transactions for additional follow up before shipping.

Before loosening your AVS rules, you need to understand that most merchant account providers classify transactions that do not match for both street address and zip code as "non-qualified" transactions. These transactions usually get charged a higher discount rate than your normal discount rate. Depending on you merchant account agreement this penalty can add up to an additional 2% above your normal discount rate, so check with your merchant account provider before accepting "no match" transactions.

The solution to the second problem take a little bit more work to implement, however it can significantly reduce the number of AVS mismatches you receive. For this solution you can keep your AVS system set to reject "no match" transactions, however you need to modify your "Card Rejected" error page to include a brief educational statement, such as the one below.

"We're sorry, your credit card has been declined. This can happen for several reasons. Your billing address* should match the address on your credit card statement. Please check your billing address, card number and expiration date and try again.

*NOTE: If you have recently moved, your credit card company may not have updated your billing address in their Address Verification Database. It can take up to 6 months or longer for some credit card companies to update your address, even if they send your bill to your new address. If you have recently moved, try using your previous billing address when you check out."

By making just a few changes in the way you use AVS at your web site and by educating your customers about address verification, you can boost your conversion rates and sales, while lowering your merchant account fees!

About The Author

Eric Graham is the owner and CEO of several successful online and offline businesses. Recognized as one of the top authorities on eCommerce and Internet Marketing, Eric is a sought after speaker and consultant. To boost YOUR conversion rates and gain an unfair advantage over your competition visit www.web-site-evaluations.com.

Recommended Affiliate : WidgetBucks

2008-01-02T10:21:00.000+07:00

Sign-Up Bonus

Publishers and Bloggers! When you sign-up with WidgetBucks, you'll automatically receive a $25 bonus into your account to get the ball rolling. This means you are half way to your first payout with WidgetBucks.

Referral Program

With WidgetBucks' Referral program, affiliates can earn a 10 percent referral fee based on the commissions earned by the people they refer. Affiliates receive this 10 percent for the full 12 months after the new member joins. Payouts to affiliates are monthly, along with their commission checks.

-----------------------------

Source : http://tungblog.atikomtrirat.com/2008/01/recommended-affiliate-widgetbucks.html

Shopping Cart Usability

2007-12-31T12:43:00.000+07:00

Usable Shopping Carts Increase Sales

E-commerce has been around since 1993 under many different names, but one thing remains constant; shoppers want usable web sites. Without a usable shopping cart the sites typically fail from poor performance. To succeed in the world of e-commerce and on the Internet web sites must be developed to be usable by patrons as well as search engines.

The most successful sites have been turning to web analytic software to tell them how people use their site. When they notice a break in their site they go in to determine the problem. Marketers tend to think the words on the site are the breaking points; while this may, in part be true, it is more often how the site operates and makes shopping easier for the customer.

Elements of a Usable Shopping Cart

Before a usable shopping cart can be developed several elements must be realized and controlled. Not all things can be overcome, but all things can be controlled. Understanding human nature and how people use new tools can help in controlling the most challenging situations.

Site Navigation

Site navigation must be as easy as possible. Without making the navigation as easy as possible customers will become confused and frustrated which encourages them to leave without purchasing.

Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs are the links found in web sites that show the hierarchical path of the page. Not everyone enters a site through the front page and breadcrumbs make it much easier to reach related products without having to dig around the site.

Adding Items to the Cart

Shoppers want to see some visual confirmation that the action they take works. Sites that fail to provide visual cues lose customers due to confusion and the thought that the site doesn't work.

JavaScript

JavaScript requires the browser to support JavaScript. Without the ability to support JavaScript or with JavaScript turned off, functions that require JavaScript can't work. Vital shopping cart functions should not be developed in such a way that JavaScript is required.

Flash

Flash requires the shopper to support the version of Flash being used. People that support Flash 4 can't support Flash MX without upgrading. Customers will leave for another store if they are required to upgrade their plug-ins. At the very least, it will require that they have to download the plug-in and start the shopping experience from the very beginning.

Checkout Process

The checkout process should be as short as possible. The faster a person can checkout the faster the customer can be on their way to other things.

Checkout Progress

Each step of the checkout progress should indicate the current step and the total number of steps. This helps the customer know where they are in the process and the number of steps remaining.

Ask for Information in the Proper Order

Credit card information should never be asked for until after all the charges have been calculated and presented to the customer. Asking for this information prior to disclosing the full charges will cause the shopper to abandon the cart.

Advantages of Usable Shopping Carts

Usable shopping carts open the market to the consumer. By making a shopping cart usable to the consumer the process of shopping online is less threatening and actually becomes more inviting. NetIQ, the developers of WebTrends, has developed a successful system that helps web site owners, marketing specialists and web development teams make more usable and helpful web sites.

Understanding how shoppers use one's site and shopping cart can help turn more visitors into purchasing customers. The national average for shopping cart conversion is two percent; however that conversion rate can be increased through having more usable web sites and shopping carts. Multiple paths to the products and easier checkout processes can help greatly.

About The Author

Lee Roberts is the President/CEO of Rose Rock Design, Inc. and owner of the Apple Pie Shopping Cart.

Do You Need A Merchant Account?

2007-12-31T12:38:00.000+07:00

Deciding when to get your own merchant account for internet sales can be a confusing and expensive venture. If you have a small to medium sized business and only sell a small amount of products then having your own merchant account may not be the answer for you. Some of the costs involved include.

Monthly fees. Anywhere between $25-$50 for statements and minimum fees.

Per transaction and charges fees. Usually between 2%-3.5 % in fees and .30-.50 per transaction.

Gateway fees. $10-$30 per month

SSL certificate. Can be as much as $250

Shopping cart fee or software purchase. Monthly can range $20-$70 and software purchase can be as much as $1400.

In addition to the cost is the technical aspect of setting up your site to use a shopping cart and real-time processing. Not all gateways, merchant accounts and shopping carts play well together. You must make sure that each can work with each other. Plus be prepared to properly set up your web server to use all this nice technical information the accounts give you.

Now, if you are a larger business or do a lot of sales each month perhaps your own merchant account is the answer for you. It can save you money in the long run. But if you are just starting out with an online business, then a third party merchant may be the answer for you. Third party merchants handle all the background details, pay the monthly fees, assume the risks of fraud and charge backs, and handle all the secure shopping your customers will expect when shopping online. While the monthly fees may be a bit higher, there usually isn't a set up charge, gateway fees, SSL charges and shopping cart set up. Depending on the service you choose, they can give you simple HTML code to add to your site or allow you to use "buy buttons" or both. Fees range anywhere from 5% to 13.5%. Some companies charge a set up fee and a per transaction fee.

Then there is always Paypal. A useful service for new comers to the online payment arena but it has its drawbacks. With Paypal:

Your customer must set up an account with them

They can FREEZE your account

They can set limits on monthly transactions

I suggest you explore all your options and decide what is best for you financially and technically. A little research online can save you money and time in the long run.

About The Author

Jim Hoffman is the co-founder of Inet Goodies. An internet resource group, focusing on SEO, Hosting, Billing solutions and Traffic.

http://seogoodies.com

Choosing the Right Online Shopping Cart

2007-12-31T12:35:00.000+07:00

Are you a website owner or a web designer/developer? If either applies, I would venture to say that eventually you'll need an online shopping cart for one of your websites. In fact, almost all new websites today need some sort of ecommerce built-in, for the purpose of selling goods and services in the online marketplace.

The greatest challenge is to find the perfect ecommerce shopping cart solution for yourself and/or your client. This task can be very overwhelming, considering, if you type 'shopping cart' into Google.com, this search alone returns over 14.4 million hits! Most of us don't have the time to sift through more than a few pages of a search engine to find what we're looking for.

For the last 3 months, much of my time has been devoted to researching as much shopping cart technology as I could get my hands on. In general, shopping cart software ranges in price from free to over $2000 for a single license and web hosted carts range from $5 to hundreds of dollars per month. The studied carts cover the spectrum of all web programming languages (ASP, ASP.NET, Cold Fusion, Flash, Java, JavaScript & Perl shopping carts) and provide limitless features as a whole. The problem is that locating YOUR perfect cart with YOUR specific features can be a big task.

But no fear, just follow this guaranteed step-by-step guide to locate it:

The Top 10 Steps to Finding the Best Online Shopping Cart

Cost

How much money do you have to spend on an internet shopping cart? The nice advantage is that there are shopping carts with hundreds of features and they don't cost you a dime. They are generally open source products. The only problem is that these same "free shopping carts" can take hours of installation time and be fairly difficult to configure. For a monthly fee, web hosting shopping carts are made for users with little programming experience and allows them to have an online storefront presence in no time.

Hosting vs. Software

There are two options in selecting your overall shopping cart solution. Either you get shopping cart software, download it, install it on your web server, then configure the shopping cart OR you get an online storefront (aka a hosted shopping cart) where the configuration is very basic and the required setup time is minimal. If you have some programming skills, I recommend buying a script and installing it on your own. The nice thing is that you pay a one-time fee for shopping cart software and the license is good for a lifetime. It's approximately the same price to have a hosted solution for a year compared to most one time shopping cart license fees.

Supported Gateways

What do I mean by gateways? Gateways give shopping carts the ability to connect and securely process credit card orders in real-time. Not all shopping carts are created equal. Make sure that your client's merchant account is supported by the cart you select. I have found that almost all carts support the larger online payment processing companies, such as Authorize.net, PayPal and Verisign.

Shipping Options

Will you be shipping physical products? If so, there are shopping carts that have built-in real-time shipping options through DHL, UPS And USPS. Often times, the cart gives the user the ability to view tracking orders and order status all from within your secure shopping cart web interface. Also, there are shopping carts with options to ship digital goods as well (files, programs, pictures, music and others).

Technical Support

What kind of technical support does your shopping cart offer? If you choose to purchase a script, be sure to also subscribe to the shopping cart creator's newsletter, so that you can stay on top of future updates to the software. Be aware that technical support is generally available on a pay-per-incident basis, as a yearly fee or in the rare case, free. Be sure to know what kind of customer support guarantee the shopping cart comes with.

Security

Please, only buy a shopping cart if it supports SSL (secure socket layer), with 128-bit encryption. As an online storefront, remember that you are responsible for the safe transfer of sensitive information (credit card and bank account information) that is processed through your store. If any of the sensitive information is accessible (stolen) from your website, you could be liable. Be sure that you're purchasing a secure shopping cart solution. Ask the creator's of the shopping cart what they do specifically to protect the secure transfer of sensitive information.

Style Compatibility

Can you customize your shopping cart to look like your website? There needs to be a seamless transition between your website and your shopping storefront or your customers might get hesitant in purchasing your products. There should be similar colors and style layout to look professional and believable.

Extra Features

I just wanted to mention some of the other features that I have discovered, which might be a critical point in determining the shopping cart you want.

Affiliate Program - Offer your own customized affiliate program through your shopping cart software. Quickbooks Integration - Many carts allow direct integration with Quickbooks.

Newsletter & Mailing Letter Managers - The ability to stay in touch with your current customers and keep them returning to your online store.

Custom Taxing Options - Create taxable or tax-free products and have the ability to add various global tax options at checkout.

World Languages & Currencies - Shopping cart language translation and support for world currency might be a necessary feature for your cart.

Error Free

You mean shopping carts can have errors? Of course. A private UK-based web testing firm found the following, after studying a large group of UK online shopping carts for a period of one month (24/7):"The majority of UK web sites are guilty of leaving e-consumers stranded at the checkout empty handed, once they have already spent valuable time browsing and selecting goods to purchase. This is due to erratic functionality within shopping carts, at a critical step in the online purchasing process."

"E-consumers are prevented from making purchases on UK web sites for 9 hours and 30 minutes a month on average, (115 hours a year)." "80 per cent of web sites perform inconsistently with widely varying response times, timeouts and errors - leaving consumers at best wondering what to do next and at worst unable to complete their purchase successfully. This is potentially costing e-retailers millions in lost sales from consumer frustrations." (http://www.scivisum.co.uk/report/ecommerce/)

Be sure to see what other users are saying about a shopping cart that you might be interested in purchasing. Any shopping cart errors could cost you thousands of dollars in sales. Get a stable and secure cart.

Shopping Cart Directory

The following is a link containing a directory of shopping carts that are categorized according to each of the above-stated steps. Make shopping for shopping carts a breeze!

About The Author

Evan Stevens is a professional web developer. This article reviews ecommerce online shopping carts.

Developing a Winning e-Commerce Strategy

2007-12-31T12:31:00.000+07:00

We are a full service ad agency so I don't mind shooting arrows in the direction of my peers. Too much attention is being placed on web site advertising metrics (clickthrough rates, certified traffic to substantiate ad rates, etc.) and not enough on how people find and use an e-commerce web site. The industry standard web site analysis tool is Web Trends, but one of the least understood aspects of this product is tracking how people find and move around a web site via reports which can be pulled from the server log files; i.e., where did the visitors come from, what pages do they visit, how long do they stay, what are their traffic patterns, etc.? e-Commerce companies should be analyzing these "digital customer tracks" to better understand how to improve their front-end marketing processes and back-end web site design.

About The Author

Lee Traupel has 20 plus years of business development and marketing experience - he is the founder of Intelective Communications, Inc., http://www.intelective.com, a results-driven marketing services company providing proprietary services to clients encompassing startups to public companies. Lee@intelective.com

Shopping Carts For The Faint Of Heart

2007-12-24T18:23:00.000+07:00

The chief criteria for judging an ecommerce shopping cart are the number of credit card processors and shipping services it supports, and the number of people that support *it*.

Why? Because credit card processors and shipping services mutate all the time. Your cart will require updating. Which service works today may go out of business tomorrow, and leave you with the orders piling up.

Other important criteria are how easy it is to set up, and add products, and how easy it is for the customer to use.

When you set up your shop test it using a wide variety of the oldest and buggiest browsers you can find. If your web store works under them you're home and dry.

Here are the cheapest, simplest, and most effective carts I've found:

1. Oscommerce (free) - http://www.oscommerce.com

A very good, full-featured, cart. Uses Php and MySQL. Not easy to set up for a 'newbie'. Cookies are used to track the order. If you have PhpMyAdmin installed in your web account, it's easier. Requires a customer to register before they can make a purchase. Supports a wide range of credit-card processors and shipping services.

Bad point: Technical support is limited to the Oscommerce forums, which are not helpful to newbies.

Also, it may be a while before an update is available to a payment module. These are done by unpaid enthusiasts.

Good point: Oscommerce is supported by thousands of unpaid enthusiasts; this means updates do eventually arrive, and it's less likely to go out of business, unlike a commercial cart.

2. X-Cart (commercial) - http://www.x-cart.com

Similar to Oscommerce. Requires a customer to register before they can make a purchase. Lots of features and add-ons. Supports a wide range of credit-card processors and shipping services.
Has an affiliate program add-on, and lets others sell products though your cart.

3. Dansie Cart (commercial) - http://www.dansie.net

A well specified cart. Supports a wide range of credit-card processors and shipping services.

Bad point: Apparently the Perl code is obscured, to make it harder to copy, which is annoying if you want to customise it.

3. Interchange (free) - http://www.icdevgroup.org

A version of the old Akopia / Minivend carts. Complex product with lots of files and a lot of setting up to do. A complete solution, and includes the option of third party credit-card real-time order processing. Encrypts orders.

4. Agora (free) - http://www.agoracart.com

A Web-Store/Commerce.cgi hybrid.

5. The Commission Cart (commercial) - http://www.siteinteractive.com

A CGI-based shopping cart which also functions as an affiliate program. Other webmasters earn commissions by signing up and linking to your site.

6. ShopFactory (commercial) - http://www.shopfactory.Com

Has a nice little wizard-based set-up. If you have a lot of items in your shop, this is an option worth checking out.

This is a very valuable feature. A person who's set up CGI scripts before will get the most out of this. Supports a wide range of credit-card processors and shipping services.

Bad points: It's ugly, awkward, and uses JavaScript too much.

7. WebGenie Shopping Cart Pro (commercial) - http://www.webgenie.com

A simple, wizard-based option. Uses Javascript a bit, but the main work is done by CGI scripts. It saves the credit card information on your server.

It's for someone who hasn't set up a CGI script before. Expensive for what you get, but it works. Option to buy it on hire-purchase.

8. Actinic Catalog (commercial) - http://www.actinic.co.uk

Most suitable if you have lots of items in your store. It's a 'wizard'-based PC program; you type in your information, and the program sets up the store.

You should set up the default store as-is, then customise it later. Supports a wide range of credit-card processors and shipping services. A little complicated for an internet newbie; there's quite a lot in it.

9. Order Maven (commercial) - http://www.briggsoft.com

A clever little program. It's a standalone Windows executable, which the customer downloads. The customer starts it up, chooses the product, enters their details, and sends off their order like an email, with the credit card details encrypted. It costs $29.00 at the time of writing. No secure server or order page needed; it's all done on the customer's PC at their leisure.

You need to customise it. Make sure you write your mail server URL into the code. For the customer, the order module is a 160kb download.

NOTE: Try to avoid carts that use cookies and javascript only, or that tie you into only one secure server and credit-card processor.
Also avoid web-based services that you lease only. They can go out of business, leaving you flat.

Having read the above you should have eliminated quite a few programs from your shopping list. They either won't work properly with all browsers, or they won't encrypt your order, or they want to tie you into their manufacturers' secure order system at $40+ per month.

Another option is to get a bespoke system set up for you by a specialist company. These cost thousands of dollars. Aren't you glad you read this far?

About the author: T. O' Donnell (http://www.tigertom.com/web-designer-london.shtml) is an ecommerce and web site design consultant in London, UK.

Online Merchant Account - Costs and Alternatives

2007-12-24T18:19:00.000+07:00

Merchant Account Basics

A Merchant Account is a commercial bank account established by a merchant to receive payment via credit cards. Three parts are required to accept credit cards. Besides a merchant account, you need a local bank checking account to deposit funds and a processing solution, such a terminal or web-based store front to take credit card payments. Online merchant account, or ecommerce merchant account, is a merchant account that can take credit orders on the Web.

Cost of Merchant Account

An online merchant account will boost your online sales, but merchant account incurs various types of cost. A merchant account usually requires a one-time setup fee between $50 - $100. Some merchant account providers waive the setup fee in promotion period or in conjunction with other services. Other costs include gateway fee, statement fee, annual fee, transaction fees and discount rate fees.

Accept Credit Card without Merchant Account

When you first start an online business and have limited resources, the alternative would be to use the services of a credit card processor. You can enjoy the benefits of processing credit card transactions online without the requirements of a merchant account and high costs involved. Paypal, WorldPay, PaySystems and Clickbank are some of popular credit processing services. Popular shopping carts or online storefronts, such as eBay Store, Yahoo! Store and Microsoft bCentral, offer built-in credit card processing capability.

International Merchant Account

International merchant accounts, or Offshore Merchant Accounts, are merchant accounts that allow the merchants to accept payments from around the world-- regardless of where your business or customers are located. Comparing to an online merchant account, two major services that come with an International merchant account are Multiple-Currency Support and International Fraud Protection.

Wireless/Mobile Merchant Account

Mobile merchants used to face unique issues when accepting credit card payments. With the advancement of high-speed wireless networks and mobile technology, mobile businesses are no longer limited in their payment options to just cash or checks.

Many mobile merchant account (http://www.4th-media.net/online_payment/mobile_merchant_account.php) service providers waive application fee and setup fees to attract more businesses. However, the use of wireless service provider does incur the expense of the terminal hardware, activation fee, monthly service fee, and transaction cost.

Bruce Zhang has over 10 years experience in developing ecommerce and e-business application such as literature fulfillment (http://www.4th-media.net/order_fulfillment/literature_fulfillment.php) and supply chain management applications.

A Tale of Two Revolutions - Ecommerce: A Historical Perspective

2007-12-24T18:09:00.000+07:00

The World As It Then Was

The dynamic economic growth of the late 19th century placed greater and greater demand on horses to deliver manufactured goods between train and local destinations. Horses pulled stagecoaches, buggies, omnibuses, cabs and even shipping barges in canals. Hitching posts, mounting blocks, and water troughs were everywhere throughout cities in Europe and America. Beautiful carriage houses catered to the wealthy. Horse doctors were highly respected and treated humans as well. Blacksmiths were prominent members of every community.

On the farms, horses pulled wagons laden with supplies, and carried saddled riders throughout the rough terrains. Stronger and larger horses were bred to pull the new plowing and reaping machines. Carriage makers, harness makers, feed merchants, hardware producers, farm equipment manufacturers and the great livestock industry all thrived on the horse.

The World Changing Invention

In 1885 Karl Benz invented the first gasoline-powered automobile, with a lot of help from his wife Bertha. Other makers followed, but the auto was very expensive and generally considered a recreational vehicle for the elite.

The Transportation Revolution

In 1903, Henry Ford incorporated the Ford Motor Company in the United States proclaiming, "I will build a car for the great multitude." By 1908, he was offering the Model T for $950 and by 1914; Ford had invented the first conveyor belt assembly line. He was able to produce a Model T every 93 minutes, which was eventually lowered to every 27 seconds! He reduced the workday to three 8-hour shifts and paid his workers five dollars a day; double what other manufacturers were paying!

Wondrous Freedom

Can you imagine the joy? People could now explore long distances from home and return easily on the same day! Suburbs were created away from work in the cities. National highways were created. Recreational travel became popular as people experienced the unbelievable freedom of affordable automobiles. It must have been amazing to live in such times watching the complete transformation of society from top to bottom.

What Happened to the Blacksmiths?

The Blacksmiths, carriage makers, horse doctors, and horse driven industries would suffer tremendous change and downsizing; a transportation revolution was underway. Mercifully the changes took place over a couple decades. There would be a messy transition period as horses and gasoline powered vehicles shared the same roads.

Another World Changing Invention

In 1969, The Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Defense Department created a system that could transmit information between military installations through a network of geographically separated computers called the ARPAnet. They invented revolutionary new technology to accomplish this success. As the technology grew, this Internet, as it soon would be called, became the domain of scientists, university researchers, government entities and intellectual elites. But if your work wasn't included in this circle, the Internet was a government mystery.

The Information Revolution

Tim Berners-Lee could be considered, "The Henry Ford of the Internet" because like Ford, he brought a fantastic invention, enjoyed by the elite, to the mainstream customer.

In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee proposed a new project at CERN, a research organization out of Geneva where he worked that would build upon a pet project he built for his own computer in 1980. Modeled after how he saw the human brain organize information, it enabled him to link one piece of information in one file to another file, "to keep track of all the random associations one comes across in real life" but that our brains often forget. He called the program, "Enquire" which was short for "Enquire Within Upon Everything", a British encyclopedia he had used in childhood.

The guiding principle of Tim's new project was unlimited expansion. He would design a system with no central control or index and would therefore be infinite in capacity. If it worked, it could dramatically change the nature of the Internet, which most people still had never heard of, much less ever used. Tim would call his new invention WorldWideWeb.

WWW: Information Without Limits

Tim designed an addressing structure so that each web site, would have a specific location called the "Universal Resource Locator" (URL) He put together an easy to learn coding system called HyperText Mark-Up Language (HTML), so that files could be linked to one another allowing people to "jump" from one page to another, across unlimited amounts of files on unlimited numbers of computers. The rules he designed to facilitate this were called the HyperText Transfer Protocol. (HTTP)

The First Browser

By 1990, he created the first browser-editor to employ the new rules and coding; he called it the "WorldWideWeb". In 1991 the World Wide Web debuted bringing order and clarity immediately to the murky and mysterious Internet. Anyone could use Tim's browser and connect to anyone's computer with a URL (web address) jumping from computer to computer through Tim's updated version of Enquire.

A new and vast information system was now coming to the masses of ordinary people. The terms "Internet" and "World Wide Web" are now used synonymously but as you can see, they were once vastly different. Tim Berners-Lee is the inventor of the World Wide Web and within five years of his invention, Internet use grew from 60,000 to 40 million.

As of March 24, 2005, there were 888,681,131 Internet users worldwide or 13.9% of total world population. In North America there were 328,387,059 Internet users or 67.4% of the population. Internet usage grew 146.2% last year alone. There was a whole new class of millionaires created by the dot-com expansion of the 1990's and it's now hard to find a major business without a website. This is a revolution like none other in history and it's happening now.

Business Freedom and E-commerce

With corresponding breakthroughs in digital payment systems, including credit cards and electronic checks, Internet sales systems such as the online shopping cart allow anyone to browse and also purchase goods and services from any computer on the Web. Today there are still a few "blacksmiths" who believe the old ways are better, and maybe for those stalwarts of the brick and mortar economy, the old ways are better. But households are becoming more and more comfortable shopping from hundreds of millions of home computers worldwide. Total e-commerce sales in the United States for 2004 is $69.2 billion, as estimated by the Census Bureau, increasing from 23.5 percent over 2003. Anyone can have a website and sell products online to anyone in the world.

"I Was Born On the Internet"

There is now a whole generation who grew up using the Internet and they have no problem buying or selling products and services online. Shopping is convenient, fast and the delivered directly to home or business.

The Global Economy

The global economy now makes it easy to import and export online worldwide. Flowers are grown in South America, sold in the United States and managed from a company in Holland. Salmon is sold directly from fisherman in Alaska. Prices can be compared to similar products around the world. Merchants no longer need to maintain large stocks of products in buildings. An online store can take an order, process the payment, deposit it into the merchant's bank account, and a different company called a "drop shipper" can fulfill the sale and send out the merchandise.

Encouragement From Uncle Sam

According to the Small Business Administration, "The Internet is proving to be a significant business leveler, allowing small and medium-size companies to compete with the giants on the same global playing field...Whether you are a consumer or a business-to-business resource, some of the most efficient marketing and selling tools are available via the Internet, and the potential of reaching a vast audience is open to you through the World Wide Web."

Conclusion: Are You Part of the Revolution?

In 1905 one might ask, "Are you delivering your products by horse, or have you purchased a Ford motorized delivery wagon? In 2005 people are asking, "Can I buy your products online or do I have to get in my car and come out to your store? What's your web address?" If you haven't jumped in, it's never too late. The Information Revolution has only just begun.

Rick David writes for a Merchant Newsletter @
Merchant America. He
also writes a humor column called,

"Don't Laugh It Could Happen To You" for
http://sandiego.merchantamerica.com.

Short Story: The Benefits of Shopping Online

2007-12-24T18:08:00.000+07:00

Maria's new lifestyle: Short story about the benefits shopping on the Net has given to a dedicated artist.

I've got this strange friend; her name is Maria. Maria's always been a little weird but now things have gotten unworldly altogether. You see, Maria's an artist; she's into sculpture in particular, of which she specializes in the manipulation of Perspex with a blowtorch. Lately I haven't seen too much of her as she's hooked up the Internet. Actually not many people at all have seen her recently; she says she's working on a big project.

Now that she's got the Internet she reckons she can focus a lot more on her work without distractions. She doesn't 'waste' time doing grocery shopping anymore. Now she orders all her food and household items. She says if she's extremely busy, her weekly list is saved into the computer, and she just clicks on 'order' and the usual stuff is delivered to her door every week. No more driving, parking, searching for stuff, standing in line, dealing with bored and under slept cashiers. I'm starting to think it's not such a bad idea. Maria is pretty proud. She's now organizing for a local greengrocer to deliver her fruit and vegetables too.

Maria has always had a 'thing' for Donald Duck. On the Net she's found all these rare collectable dealers like Ebay. When she's not warping Perspex into postmodern configurations representing the need for a more spiritual existence, she's thriving in the consumerist world of finding and bidding for Donald Duck comic books from the 1950's. Last I heard a friend said she's actually starting to look like a duck herself!

All this Internet shopping is pretty new to me, it sounds like it really could help a lot of people out. However for recluse artists it could be the final straw for friends and family who may never see their buddies again! Nah, its cool-I just hope Maria's new project isn't a giant Perspex Donald Duck. I don't think the world needs any more Donald Ducks!

I just got back from Maria's place. You're not going to believe what I saw. She was actually having a party, and I wasn't invited. Maybe she thinks I'm boring compared to her new friends. She says she met them on the Internet, a whole bunch of people into Donald Duck! One guy was actually dressed up like Yosemite Sam-gun belt and all! It seems I'm the odd one out.

Before I left her place she showed me her new sculpture. I underestimated her newfound love. It's a giant computer; inside it is filled with the heads of all her friends (me included). Of course none of us had human mouths, smiling duck beaks adorned all the heads, a definite sign of the Internet's powerful influence, and of the collective warping of today's society!

About The Author

Jesse S. Somer is a human hoping to show his fellow Earth citizens the beautiful opportunities the Internet is making available for all our lives.

M6.Net

http://www.m6.net

How to Get Free Internet Merchant Accounts

2007-12-24T18:05:00.000+07:00

This article will show small businesses how to get free internet
merchant accounts. If your business is to grow and succeed, it
is essential to accept online credit cards.

Benefits of accepting online credit cards.

1. It has been proven that sales increase dramatically when
you accept online credit cards.

2. Up to 75% of online purchases are made on impulse and
customers spend up to 50% more when using their credit
cards.

3. Above all, if you accept online credit cards you build
credibility in the eyes of your customers as they assume
only established businesses will accept cards.

However, it is not necessary to have your own internet
merchant account to be able to accept credit card
payments on your website. Most small businesses do not
need their own online merchant account.

How to get free online credit cards

Getting your own internet merchant account is more difficult
than obtaining an offline merchant account because the card
is not present at payment nor is the signature obtained.
Sometimes, small and new companies face extra difficulties.

Nevertheless, these problems can be overcome by getting a
Third Party Processing company to accept online credit card
payments on behalf of you or your company.

How Third Party Processors operate

The payments your customers make are processed through
the third party's own merchant account, and you the retailer
is paid (minus a commission) by the third party processor.
This allows you to sell online without the necessity of having
your own internet merchant account.

However, the Third Party Processor makes its profit by
charging a processing fee. Usually, third party processor charges
are a little more on a transaction compared with having your
own online merchant account. Though set-up fees are usually
free or minimal.

So, there you have it. You can accept online credit cards on your
website through a Third Party Processor without needing your
own merchant account. Free internet merchant accounts by
another name!

Evaluating Vendors of Ecommerce Fulfillment Services

2007-12-12T12:28:00.000+07:00

Once your website has secured an order, you have to fulfill it. While the fulfillment of digital goods is usually handled online, the delivery of physical goods is handled in a "brick-and-mortar" world.

When choosing a fulfillment company ( http://www.4th-media.net/order_fulfillment/decision_making.php ) for your ecommerce operation, you need to evaluate both fulfillment services and ecommerce services for order processing.

Evaluating Fulfillment Services

Fulfillment services includes receiving, inventorying, warehousing, delivery, record-keeping and customer inquiries. You have options to outsource part of or all of fulfillment services to a third party.

Receiving - This is the process that fulfillment vendors acquire goods from suppliers and the accuracy of services starts at the receiving.

Inventorying - The skills of inventory management directly impact the quality and cost of fulfillment. If inventory is out of stock, you may lose customers. If inventory level is too high, it may increase the cost of inventory.

Warehousing - Physical goods are stored in a warehouse and valuable items are usually stored in secure storage. While fulfillment companies have their warehouses and distribution centers, small businesses can store goods in their garages or basements.

Shipping - For order fulfillment, goods are delivered to customers in various shipping methods - ground, overnight, etc. at fulfillment centers. Customers specify shipping methods when they place their orders and the fulfillment companies may adjust the shipping methods of the delivery.

Return and Order Inquiry - Customer Service Reps at fulfillment companies can handle return and refund for their clients. Most ecommerce sites allow customers to view their orders and status of fulfillment online.

Record Keeping and Reporting - The ability to track all information pertinent to the order fulfillment (from inventory items, customers, orders to shipping) will help businesses to gain insights into the behaviors of their customers. Fulfillment companies and large organizations usually install inventory and fulfillment management software to automate the processes. Small business owners can find shareware for less than $100.

Evaluating Ecommerce Services

E-commerce fulfillment vendors are usually fulfillment vendors that provide ecommerce services related to fulfillment.

Online Catalog - Ecommerce fulfillment vendors can either develop online storefront ( http://www.4th-media.net/online_storefront/ ) for you or integrate your online storefront into their backend fulfillment system.

Online Payment Processing - Online storefronts from ecommerce fulfillment providers should have the ability to process payments online in credit card, electronic check, and purchase order. Using a fulfillment company, you can accept credit card online without a online merchant account.

Government Buying and Selling on the Internet

2007-12-12T12:26:00.000+07:00

Global Insight, a leading economic and financial forecasting company, (formerly DRI-WEFA), states that all levels of government (federal, state, and local) should see steady increases in the purchases of goods and services through the year 2009.

Vendors willing to make the commitment to sell to government can reap the benefits of this projected government spending.

By the same token, government agencies able to expand and modernize their procurement programs can reap the rewards of increased productivity, and a reduction in the costs of goods and services.

If you are a company looking to efficiently market your goods or services, increase sales and receive targeted sales opportunities, or if you are a government agency looking to simplify your procurement process and increase vendor competition, there exist plenty of opportunities in today's online procurement marketplace.

Vendors: Consider Selling to Government

If you haven't considered selling to government, you are missing out. With past events like the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, and the slowing down of the private sector economy, more companies are focusing on doing business with government agencies. Believe it or not, the most reliable component of the economy right now is the government.

The U.S. Federal Government is the largest buyer in the world, and state and local governments often make up a large percentage of their respective marketplaces In many cities, government employs more people and buys more products and services that any other entity.

Doing business with government isn't just for corporate giants, either. The U.S. Small Business
Administration (SBA) helps to ensure that small businesses obtain a certain percentage of everything the government buys. And despite budget crunches in many municipalities, state and local government spending remains the largest in any single market in the nation.

Deciding whether to bid on a government contract can have far-reaching and long-term implications for companies. It is crucial to reach the right decision - a decision which contributes to the health of an organization. If a company decides to bid, it is creating an opportunity to make money, enhance its reputation, gain experience and cement a relationship with a major new customer.

Where do Vendors Start?

There are literally tens of thousands of purchasing agencies to deal with, and it is difficult to know where to begin. Unfortunately, bidding for lucrative government contracts is a highly decentralized process. Companies used to have to be on an agency's bidding list in order to be notified of a purchasing opportunity.

Now, with the expansion of electronic government and recent government initiatives encouraging agencies to implement online procurement systems, many agencies are making the move to e-procurement. However, even with this move to online purchasing, identifying targeted bids can still be very challenging for companies.

Finding and monitoring bid notices is difficult because they are posted in so many different places, and often not well organized. Your business can spend a great deal of time surfing from one site to the next trying to track down the right bid opportunities.

In one area of government bidding, however, an effort to create a government-wide point of entry web site has resulted in an Internet purchasing marketplace called FedBizOpps. As of October 1, 2001 the Federal government requires federal agencies to use this system to post all their opportunities expected to exceed $25,000.

Although no such central web site exists for the over 87,000 state and local government agencies in the country, there are services available that match a company's criteria with agency bids on the Internet, then send this information directly to them via email.

The benefits of using a bid matching service are detailed by Tammy Axlund, a Marketing Manager with Midland Resources who says, "(Using a Bid) service has helped us build a national database to keep track of the industry happenings throughout the country, rather than just our region. We have also been able to win a few bids of which we had no prior knowledge."
Similarly, Teresa Eastman, the Inside Sales Manager for Accurate Safety Distributors, Inc. states "I no longer have to spend my days looking for bids individually, a needle in a haystack so to speak, instead (the bid service) does it all and sends them to me daily."

While no service can provide your company with every bid opportunity from every state and local government agency, bid matching services greatly reduce a vendor's time and money spent, allowing for additional time to be used to respond to bids.

e-Procurement Benefits for Government: Save time, Save money

In the recent past most agencies had to copy and mail their bid packages to any vendor who requested them, even though many would decide not to bid. Using an online e-procurement system allows agencies to simply provide vendors an electronic notice of their opportunities. This results in a tremendous savings in postage, paper, and time.

There have also been new efforts to simplify the entire procurement process for government agencies. For example, many agencies are having procurement systems customized for them using the Internet, driven by the need to disclose. Agencies used to be required to advertise all their requests for bid in the newspaper. But in recent years, the statutes in many states changed to permit advertising on the Web instead - which meets purchasing departments' requirements to make contract information public.

While posting bid information may seem like a lot of work, it isn't a duplicate process for government agencies because their sites serve a dual role as a vehicle for disclosure, and as their primary document archive. And usually only a minimal staff is required to keep the site up to date.

Karen Storm, director of Purchasing for Albany County, NY, explains that since joining the Capital Region Purchasing Group, an e-procurement system in upstate NY, "?our municipality has streamlined the bid distribution and vendor notification processes. This has saved us hours of repetitive clerical tasks and has significantly reduced our copying and mailing costs. Our vendors love the system because it provides them immediate access to our information at little or no cost."

The City of Rochester Hills, Michigan, reports similar benefits, explaining that they have realized a savings of over $355,000 by posting approximately 85 solicitations from January to June of 2004 on their e-procurement system, the Michigan Inter-Governmental Trade Network. And, the Santa Rosa County School District Purchasing Department, which has been using an e-procurement system since the fall of 2000, says "The biggest benefit we have realized is that we no longer have to manage our bidder's list. Our old bidder's list had grown to over 20,000 vendors, most of whom never responded to solicitations. Managing the list was a burden that we do not miss!"

Many companies have been working with Purchasing Departments, to create customized e-procurement systems like the ones described above, that simplify and expedite the entire procurement process. And the best part is, they do this free of charge.

E-procurement systems provide many benefits for vendors as well. Vendors simply register themselves online with a system and create a profile specific to their products and/or services. Vendors then receive notices instantly by fax or e-mail every time bids are issued that match their profile and are given the ability to respond to quotes by fax or e-mail.

Systems like this can save companies significant amounts of time while increasing sales, it's also a good way for tax dollars to help grow businesses of all sizes and generating new profit centers. At the same time, government agencies benefit by decreasing their spending, gaining more control and simplifying the procurement process.

What are you waiting for? The new era of "e-procurement" is here, and it has significantly streamlined the entire bidding process for both buyers and sellers alike.

Christina DeMers is the Marketing Coordinator for BidNet, a firm that has been providing services for both government buyers and their vendors, for almost 20 years. More information about BidNet can be found at their web site: http://www.bidnet.com or by calling: (800)-677-1997.

How To Turn Any Product You Sell In To Residual Income

2007-12-12T12:25:00.000+07:00

The concept of this is for you to offer a subscription type product as an upsell or backend product. For example, if you're selling an ebook for $37 offer a subscription to a related e-zine for $9.95 a month. Instead of an e-zine, it could be monthly updated information for the ebook.

It's not just for e-books, you can make it work for any product or service you sell. Some subscriptions that might work for your product could be:

e-mail/telephone consulting
a private or members only web site
print newsletters/magazines
product updates
subscription warrantees
product insurance
e-zine/webzines
the ideas are endless.....

The subscription product should be related to the product or service you're selling. You could charge a weekly, monthly, or yearly subscription for the upsell product. You could sell your main product and upsell product as a total subscription package deal. You wouldn't charge the one-time price for your main product; you would just charge the basic subscription price of the upsell product.

The major benefits are that you don't have to keep creating new upsell and back end products. Once you get enough subscribers you won't have to sell anymore, you just keep generating income from your current subscribers. You would only have to sell again if you lost a lot of subscribers.

Selling From Your Website

2007-12-04T21:51:00.000+07:00

Greetings!

Friends and relitives ask us all the time " How do sell from your website?" and no doubt you want to know as well. Over the next two issues we will be covering this very thing! We decided to divide it into two camps - tangibles and non-tangibles. Feel free to create a hybrid if you are daring, however, for the sake of simplicity - both for your visitors as well as your planning figure out which of the two is applicable and focus your efforts as needed.

Tangibles:

If you are selling products, it needs to be organized in some fashion. Be it by subject , or alphabet, or some other method such as price or season as an example.

Lets say you're selling jewelry. You want to make it easy for your visitors to find what they're looking for first. You should have different sections i.e. rings, necklaces, watches, etc. You could have various designers alphabetized. It can also be broken down into price range aimed at a target audience. Or maybe target the sophisticed jewelry shopper who's looking for summer items or evening wear.

The idea is that it's easy for them to find what they want and make a buying decision, then get on with their life. They will remember that the next time they need a particular item.

Non-Tangibles:

We recommend a clear organised presentation for non-tangibles as well. Because you are not dealing with a concrete product, information and services can be precived as being a bit nebulous and therefore suspect.

As such, you want to make it very obvious what you are offering and how the client will benefit. Be precise. As in everything, keep it as simple as possible.

The less work on their behalf, the quicker they can come to a buying decision. Examples, testimonials and references work to establish an air of trust and security, thus motivating the visitor to sign on with you.

The Sale:

The mechanism in wich the money goes from them to you and the product then gets into their hands, is of course of prime importance.

In regards to payment, the obvious choice is of course credit cards. It's quick and easy on both you and your customers. Credit card payment is widly used and accepted.

And this can be set up realitively easy by you. There are commpanies online that are happy to do this for you for a piece of every transaction.

A small price to pay when considering that the sale may be lost due to too much trouble on your visitors behalf otherwise. 80% of something is better then 100% of nothing.

The Support:

I like to include extras. Links to other sites, pertinate information, or some other reason or benefit for the visitor to return to your site.

You do a good job with your site and they'll browse around and maybe even make that impulse buy AFTER they get what they were looking for in the first place.

About The Author

Written by Corinna Gittens-Arnold Zalca, co-authored by Leron Gittens-Arnold
Zalca, your home business resource and information site.

http://www.zalca.com

zalca@zalca.com

The Five Most Commonly Encountered, Off-putting E-commerce Errors

2007-12-04T21:49:00.000+07:00

While getting less public handwringing than during holiday season, the "abandoned shopping cart problem" continues to wreak havoc on online sales. Recently I judged a raftload of sites for the Webby Awards (my second time) and for the Inc. magazine Web Awards, as well as for my own clients. Here are the five irritants and obstacles that most frequently disrupt the visitor's shopping experience at e-commerce sites.

Lack of quick orientation for first-time visitors. What does the site sell? I've had to poke around for several minutes sometimes to understand the focus of a site. Jargon is one culprit. Another is lack of context, like an airline site that sells tickets not giving a single clue on the home page in what countries or even what continent it flies.

Choosing An Internet Merchant Account

2007-12-04T21:47:00.000+07:00

Surf to Google and perform a search on "Internet Merchant Account". The results are staggering (472,000 results!) If you have created a web based business and need to accept credit card payments, your choices are limitless. Before you partner with a provider, take time to understand the different components of internet credit card processing, and know what to look for in a merchant provider.

How It Works

Accepting credit card payments through your web site actually requires multiple components. Between a paying customer and your bank account, three layers exist:

Payment Gateway - This is the code that will transmit a customer's order to and from an internet merchant account provider. The payment gateway provides you the ability to accept customer billing information (credit card number, credit card type, expiration date, and payment amount) and the necessary validation steps that must be followed before the credit card is actually billed.

Internet Merchant Account - A Merchant Account is an account with a financial institution or bank, which enables you to accept credit card payments from your clients. The payment gateway actually transmits the billing information to the internet merchant account provider. Unfortunately, most local banks do not provide internet merchant account capability.

The main reason why most local financial institutions or banks do not want to provide online merchant accounts is because transactions conducted over the Internet are totally different from face to face transactions where a signature is required to authorize the purchase. This makes online transactions prone to credit card fraud. Fraud protection should be one of your primary considerations when choosing an internet merchant account provider.

Web Site - Regardless of which merchant provider and gateway service you choose, your web site will need to integrate with your service providers. Most providers include detailed web integration instructions.

How Much Does It Cost

Understanding the total costs of your merchant provider can be tricky. Remember my Google example - there are more merchant account providers than there are people looking for internet merchant accounts so ask questions and be picky! Typically, an internet merchant account will have three types of costs:

Up Front Application Fees
On Going Fixed Fee
Discount Rate
Fixed Transaction Fee
Termination Fees
Miscellaneous Fees

Let us discuss each type of cost:

Up Front Application Fees

Many internet merchant accounts will require an up front application fee. This fee, supposedly, is to cover their costs for processing your application. In case you choose not to open an internet merchant account, they still cover their initial costs. Although common, many providers waive these fees and I recommend that you choose a provider that does not require an up front fee.

On Going Fixed Fee

Most all internet merchant providers require a monthly fixed fee or "statement fee" as it is commonly named, which is simply another way to cover their costs and make money. You will be hard pressed to find a provider that does not require this type of fee on a monthly basis. However, do not choose an internet merchant account that requires more than $10 per month. Additionally, most internet merchant providers require a monthly minimum (usually $25). The bottom line is that you will be paying at least $25 per month (on top of the monthly statement fee) for your account.

Discount Rate

Usually, the discount rate will be between 2 and 4 percent. The discount rate is the sales commission the provider earns on each sale. For example, if the discount rate offered is 3%, and you receive a sale over your web site for $20, you will owe 60 cents to your internet merchant provider.

Fixed Transaction Fee

Usually between $0.20 and $0.30, the fixed transaction fee is the fixed fee portion of each sale. Unlike the discount rate, the fixed transaction fee is the same for every transaction. Whether you get a $1 sale or a $100 sale, the transaction fee will be the same.

Termination Fee

A bit more hidden in the small print, a termination fee can apply if you cancel your merchant account within a specified period of time (usually within one year). But beware, some merchant providers require a three year commitment!

Miscellaneous Fees

If a customer requests a refund and they want their credit card credited, an internet merchant provider will charge you a separate fee (usually between $10 - $20). Read the contract carefully, as other special fees may apply.

Putting It All Together

Now that the different fees have been explained, let us look at an example set of transactions to help understand what an internet merchant account may cost your business on a monthly basis.

I have created a simple formula to help you calculate your monthly charges:

Total Charges = Statement Fee + Number of Transactions x (Average Sale x Discount Rate + Fixed Transaction Fee) + (Number of Chargebacks x Chargeback Fee)

For example, let us see you sell widgets over the internet. The sales price for each widget is $10. You typically have 100 sales per month and about 5 people request refunds (chargebacks). For this example, let us assume you have signed up with Jones&Jones internet merchant account services and have the following terms:

Discount Rate - %2.5

Statement Fee - $10

Fixed Transaction Fee - $0.30

Chargeback Fee - $15

Using my formula above, your monthly Jones&Jones charges will be:

Total Charges = 10 + 100 x (10 x .025 + 0.3) + (5 x 15) = $140

You can calculate your monthly sales revenue by multiplying your sales volume by your price:

Monthly Sales Revenue = 100 x $10 = $1000

Your internet merchant provider is costing you %14 or your total sales.

Making Your Decision

Before you choose and internet merchant provider, understand all of the cost components. Use your current or projected sales data to forecast what your internet merchant account costs will be. Planning ahead can save you time and money.

About The Author

Andy Quick is co-founder of Findmyhosting.com (http://www.findmyhosting.com), a free web hosting directory offering businesses and consumers a hassle free way to find the right hosting plan for their needs. Feel free to contact Andy at andy@findmyhosting.com in case you have any questions or comments regarding this article.

Why This Is The Perfect Time To Start Charging For Website Subscriptions

2007-11-22T10:39:00.000+07:00

If you're a writer, researcher, subject matter expert, enthusiastic hobbyist, or an authority on almost any topic, there has never been a better time to start your own subscription website or online newsletter.

And if you're already publishing a hobby website, now is the ideal time to convert at least a portion of the content to fee-paid access.

Smart website owners are now realizing just how valuable their hard-earned knowledge is to others. Much of the information that used to be available for free to anyone and everyone on the World Wide Web is moving behind closed doors, accessible only to paying subscribers.

Savvy writers and publishers are not giving it away anymore. They're setting up profit-driven, members-only websites and building online communities of subscribers who value their knowledge. Perhaps surprisingly, resistance to paying for content is gradually melting away.

The end of free

This trend away from websites offering free information and toward a subscription, or pay-for-access business model, has several causes.

First, only a few websites operated by big companies can afford to provide valuable content without being compensated. Some of them can do it for the public relations value, but they are the exception.

The rest of us can't be so generous. And trying to recapture our expenses by selling advertising on our websites has failed to pay the bills. Online advertising and click-through rates are on the decline.

Second, many people are now more than willing to pay to learn what you already know, as thousands of online publishers of subscription websites have already proven.

Why subscribers are ready to pay

The Internet has enabled people with similar interests to find each other and form online communities. Whether your interest is in politics, gardening, or model railroading, the Internet enables you to connect to others who share your enthusiasms and values.

But in the current political and social climate, there is heightened anxiety and concern about privacy. If you previously contributed to public online discussion forums, you may now be feeling vulnerable. You never know who is lurking and reading your comments, or gathering information about you. One frequent concern: what spammers are harvesting your e-mail address?

However, in the seclusion of a subscribers-only website, you feel more protected. You can share ideas with an affinity group of like-minded people with less fear of ridicule or repercussions. The publisher moderates the forum and promises to honor your privacy.

These concerns are not diminishing over time, they are intensifying as people perceive the world -- and cyberspace -- as an increasingly dangerous place. The result has been a proliferation of private, members-only, subscription websites and online newsletters covering literally hundreds of diverse and specialized topics.

Finding the right subscription business model

Coming up with the right topic for a successful subscription website is usually the biggest stumbling block for those wanting to get into this business. Choosing your site topic is a serious issue, as the topic you select pretty much dictates your chances of success with a subscription website.

Research by the Subscription Website Publishers Association (http://www.SWEPA.com) shows at least five successful models for subscription website topic selection. These include existing print newsletter topics; trade and professional associations; career advancement, personality based or insider tips; and downloadable product libraries. For details go to http://www.swepa.com/public/136.cfm.

As the Internet changes, it is creating moneymaking opportunities for people who like to write, teach and otherwise share their expertise. Your years of study, hands-on experience, and tried and true wisdom could be worth a hefty income when turned into an online community.

Online communities bring together people who are interested in a common topic. They create value by providing insiders' secrets that the group is eager to learn about. And best of all, the members are willing to pay money to join.

Why having a subscription website on the Internet is so great

As the publisher of a subscription website, you have an almost unfair advantage over other print publications that don't operate on the Internet. Consider the benefits:

Low cost of entry -- a computer, minimal software and Internet access are all you need.
No or low rent -- work from home.
Low overhead -- production and distribution costs are close to zero.
No employees -- do it all yourself.
Operate from anywhere in the world.
Access a worldwide audience.
Reach a well educated, affluent market.
Offer a visually rich website, with text, images, audio or video.
Sell and deliver digital information products instantly.
Build loyal communities through discussion groups, online events.

The next phase in the subscription website evolution

Information is increasing in value. Over the next several years, the trend to information provided on the Internet by paid subscription will continue.

A two-tier model for the dissemination of quality content is emerging. Successful online publishers provide samples of their wares for free, either on the public portion of their website, or through a free, opt-in e-mail newsletter.

But to get down to the most valuable data -- the premium content of secrets and the insider's tips and techniques -- subscribers are learning that they have to pay. Information seekers are getting accustomed to the change, just as they have learned to pay for premium content on cable and satellite television.

The most successful online publishers will be those who can strike the perfect balance between free and fee. The time to get started with your own subscription website is now.

E-marketplaces from Sellers Perspective

2007-11-22T10:37:00.000+07:00

What is an E-marketplace anyway?

E-marketplace is a business to business web based venue, where buyers and sellers meet online, generate business leads and conduct business transactions. The e-marketplace features are tailored in a manner so that a large numbers of buyers and suppliers can be serviced as a community. A participant of an E-marketplace can be a buyer, a seller or both. Unlike an E-distribution portal which is oriented to assist suppliers selling their products or an E-procurement system which is focused on buyers solely, an E-marketplace is a platform which caters buyers and sellers equally. As a participant of an E-marketplace you are able to explore buying and selling opportunities, make sales offers and buy products and services, add products and services to aggregated e-catalog and use numerous other value added features.

E-marketplaces are tremendously beneficial to all businesses that decide to participate in them. However, the potential benefits that a company can accrue from an E-marketplace are directly proportional to the factor - how heavily the company uses the offered features of that E-marketplace. Naturally, a company that makes e-marketplace as its primary sales channel and integrates its sales resources to supply chain solutions of the E-marketplace avail more in sales and administrative overhead cost savings, reduced paper work, better customer service, reduced product distribution costs and online sales growth than a seasonal user of the e-marketplace.

A committed participant of an E-marketplace can benefit from and improve two primary factors of company productivity: Revenue Growth and Cost Savings.

Revenue Growth

Expand Customer Base

A seller, once registered with an E-marketplace, gets immediate access to a large community of prospective buyers of his products or services.

Revenue Increase from Existing Clients

Existing clients get faster and easier access to product information, quicker response to their requests, get better customer support and buy products online.

Revenue Increase from Value Added Services

Once an E-marketplace is set as primary sales channel, freed resources can be used to create more value added services for clients. Some of the services that the E-marketplace offers also can be utilized to generate more value.

Cost Savings

Order Processing Cost

The supply chain solutions of E-marketplace allow sellers to reduce order processing cost significantly. Studies show that cost of processing a purchase order can be reduced from US$ 70 down to US$ 6 only.

Sales and support costs

By automating sales and customer support processes companies can reduce over head costs over 25-30% easily.

Inventory keeping costs

Clearer visibility and forecasting ability allow companies considerably reduce inventory keeping costs.

Most executives agree that primary reason why they feel that the companies should participate in E-marketplace is its ability to streamline supply chain mechanism. Many inherent inefficiencies of supply chain process can be eliminated thanks to integrated to e-marketplaces supply chain solutions.

What sellers have to do in order to participate in E-marketplaces and reap numerous benefits that it can provide?

As most of the administrative and operational tasks are done automatically by the e-marketplaces, participation in them is not a difficult process.

These are the basic steps that a seller must take to participate in an E-marketplace:

Registration might be an easy job of filling up a form. It is much better to take some initial preparations before doing this.

Choose a good login name: your login can be used by the E-marketplace to give you subdomain name, i.e. login.e-marketplace_name.com.

Profile: A well-written profile increases company image.

Logo: your logo helps you brand your company.

Add your products or services to E-catalog

Most E-marketplaces furnish with easy to use forms or wizards for sellers to add their products to E-catalog. As the product and service classification used in the E-catalogs often is an industry standard, it is important to spend some times to find the perfect subcategories for your products or services. If you have any doubt contact the customer support of the E-marketplace. Fill up as many given fields are there for a product as you can. The more information buyer gets right away the faster his buying decision would be.

Create offers

Most sophisticated E-marketplaces have various sales platforms apart from the E-catalog inclusion. Make general sales offers, time sensitive offers (hot offers - with offer expiry dates) and auction offers of your products and services. Determine the terms and methods of price, payment and shipment.

Decide how you will handle portions of the supply chain that you have to do offline.

Although, most of the supply chain process can be done online, not all e-marketplace offer a complete end to end solution. You also have to figure out what part of your back office can be integrated to the E-marketplace.